La Pucelle
by rednightmare
Summary: Not even you could wish yourself to greatness. VTM - Bloodlines AU. Sequel to Byzantine Black.
1. Prologue: The Angels

**DISCLAIMERS**

_**GENERAL DISCLAIMER: **__**Bloodlines**_** still isn't mine. I make no claim to any official content you recognize from **_**Vampire: the Masquerade **_**(including all associated products), am affiliated with neither White Wolf nor Troika, and make no profit off my fanfiction.**

_**RATING DISCLAIMER**_**: Rated M for all the usual reasons – violence, strong language, adult themes. Please note that some may find **_**La Pucelle**_** more heavily M-rated than **_**Byzantine Black**_**; I feel it is still a far cry from MA. But ratings are and have always been a matter of personal taste. **

_**CONTENT DISCLAIMER**_**: ****The opinions/views within this story do not necessarily represent my own. Otherwise I'd be a pretty messed up excuse for a human being. **

_**CANON DISCLAIMER**_**: As an extension of the AU **_**Byzantine Black**_**, this story splits further from VTMB's beaten path than its predecessor. Before you ask yourself how that's even freaking possible, just trust me: it does. But because WoD is great in its own right, please do not use **_**La Pucelle**_** as a reference for canon material, either from **_**Bloodlines**_** or the greater **_**Vampire: the Masquerade**_** universe.**

**READER INFO**

_**SERIES GUIDE: La Pucelle **_**is the final installment in my VTMB series, and is a direct sequel to **_**Byzantine Black. **_**If you have not read **_**Byzantine Black**_**, I would not recommend reading **_**La Pucelle**_**; it's no fun hearing about strangers. (See the VTMB section of my profile if you have questions about intended reading order.)**

_**OTHER VTMB WORKS**_**: (All of the following works are optional reads; they coexist with the BB/LP series, but are not dependent upon it.) **_**On White Shores**_** is an introspective one-shot starring LaCroix. **_**For Honour**_** and **_**Harlem Sunset**_** are early-stage multi-parters that attempt to blend character backgrounds with a little hist fic. I am not planning any other **_**Bloodlines**_** works at this time. **

_**TO THE READERS**_**: Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supported me through the writing and editing of **_**Byzantine Black**_**. Your encouragement and input have made this endeavor much more than it otherwise would have been. You have been great readers, teachers and friends, and I will try to express my gratitude to you through my work here. I hope **_**La Pucelle**_** brings back a part of what you liked about **_**Byzantine Black**_** while providing some new intrigue, and most of all, I hope you enjoy. **

**Thank you for reading.**

* * *

_Joan of Arc:  
The time was once  
When Love and Happiness went hand in hand,  
In that blest era of the infant world  
Ere man had learnt to bow the knee to man._

_- Robert Southey_

* * *

**The Angels **

There is something on Annette's mind.

Tonight is not extraordinary on the haggard pier of Santa Monica. The weather is wet and mild. The air is sharp-toothed with salt and carnival smells: gasoline, stale dough, suntan lotion. The wind is low, persistent and hums. It is an evening poignant and weatherworn as the blackness these city lights dissolve into – the warm, bitter glug of dark Pacific.

The year is 2018, and Los Angeles has no Prince.

Annette McByrd knows the quiet of this beach is tenuous; she is aware of the fragility involved in human constructs, how orchestrated they are, where comforts of creaking boardwalks and sifting sand are forest walls to hide large predators. This suburb has waned in power and population in recent months, part the product of crime sprees and part reaction to other creatures' undercurrents. Still, nightly signs of normalcy persevere. Diners gape open onto asphalt littered with candy wrappers. Popcorn machines lay dormant, stained with margarine spray, old kernels of childhoods. The Ferris wheel groans in suspension; its carriages eek forward after every benign, lukewarm sea breeze. Listen closely – with a melancholic mind – and the rusted gears echo with halfhearted shrieks, remembering cheap daylight thrills, a hundred summers worn cold.

Most life has moved on. Maybe sixty patrons wander this wharf tonight, hovering between the lazy bings of an outdated arcade, arms dangling over lapping ocean. They are all floaters or desolate dreamers left adrift, looking for their youth. She hears their murmurs and ritualized, distraught laughter. There is no joy in it. A time had come and gone when this flintlock woman, too, was one among them – desirous and hungering, designed to be unsatisfied. It is a distant film reel she recalls with ambivalent mood. Sometimes the thought of petty aspirations and fleshy weakness angers her, a long list of waspish combinations she used to wear: that acerbic smirk with those pencil thighs, that inflated sense of ownership, that crooked kingfisher nose beneath two searing, citrus orange braids. Sometimes it makes her break plates and spit on case files or kitchen floors. Mostly, it makes her a sort of sad.

Tense circumstances have brought her here – cheeks blanched sallow, mane as red as it ever was. Disquiet is palpable in West California these nights. The fallen Free-State might not march for a lordling any longer, but Annette has her own masters and denying lawmakers is arrogance even she would never – should never – indulge. Besides, being what she is now isn't so awful. Or so different. Federal courts require from their prosecutors many skills also worthwhile in Camarilla operators, government agents of a slightly separate strain, so this new bird has settled in well here. Almost three years she has been peering eyes, fast fingers and vulture research for a Sire. _Sire_. It is a foolishly sentimental and feudal word, but biology and emotion are both components in what she is: animate, but not fully alive; created but not born; thirty-three but still unchanging thirty. Annette cannot claim to comprehend it all, but that's all right, her warder says; she is only a fledgling, and does not need insights on everything yet.

This is a stony excuse for a woman made more from wood than flesh. McByrd is a javelin female, born by tacks and pulleys that squeak. She all sharp angles, bark pulp, too much energy (most of it hostile). There are times Annette can feel the way her blood has changed, intensifying the drive to dominate that already crackled inside her; it's half-inherited, half her own. She's a volcano on stilts. She derives gladness from the systematic pulling apart of arguments, dead cases, enemies. Too much vitriol runs through these snap-joints, these pivots, meat made for mechanisms; her body refines vitae to saline, vinegar and cigar ashes. Her back is too long and too impatient to sit perfectly upright. Her hair won't lay flat; she can't get a comb through it, teeth caught in the wool the color of hot coral.

She is older and quite a bit taller than her Sire in appearance. Yet you can tell they are from different generations. She is not as robust or feminine as the woman who Embraced her; not as gendered; needs no makeup to make her cheeks harsh. Annette's glances do not match up to that sleek, defensive sleet of her Sire's in courtrooms. They are burnt toast and bubble too much with what their owner knows (or doesn't). Her irritation flakes, fizzes, rather than steels. She is a bourbon made by a single-malt. These contrasts made their relationship look lopsided at first – but appearance, as Annette learned swiftly, could be your greatest weapon in ancient strategy games. And there is something very familiar in how they both move: concentrated motion, measured pauses, hinges that seem to smack and break rather than sweep or glide.

Perhaps there is also a bond in how her ancestor will look at her, understanding but unflinching, when Annette expresses unmet desires to know more.

It is a general rule that ignorant lawyers are poor lawyers. This one did not like the gaps in her knowledge base, an incomplete picture of a confusing world, revelations made too slow. Progenitor offered information in tidbits when it became relevant; impatient Childe wanted a full encyclopedia now. _"You shouldn't overwhelm yourself. You'll burn out," _her elder said when Annette complained, a tolerant voice that dismissed _I Just Want It On Hand _and _I Know My Own Limits_. This existence was demanding and swift, but the pace of her tutelage felt slow, peeling away blind spots like bandages off pink skin. And it was no surprise. Detail had been McByrd's business for quite some time; it was uncomfortable adjusting to life where action took precedence over knowing everything. She had accepted it, however. The woman accepted this place, narrow and preordained as it was, because serving still offered the best prospects for survival. And because she had no other choice. It was an aggravating balancing act, but her Sire is not a bad keeper… and in these dim half-lights, it is foolish not to be grateful for fair justice.

Clear, focused, _fair_ – that is the promise Serena Woeburne made LA.

Warm beer cups spill on car hoods. A teenager, face and middle round with his mother's love, wonders if climbing the safety chainlink is a worthy tradeoff to impress skinnier friends. A couple in the overhang of a dwindling dance club kisses. You can hear the bass line from here, and it is oddly anesthetizing, even now.

Annette is not sure of the historical nuances, but she's sniffed out enough to know trouble lurks in dead avenues; this young Ventrue heeds her master's accounts, hears dissident whispers. Their suspicion is understandable. Peoples riding the aftermath of rebellion and makeshift demarcation lines had a prerogative to be distrustful subjects. _"Don't use that word,"_ Ms. Woeburne had scolded her oldest Childe some time ago, sitting upon a smoking lounge couch with paperwork and scotch glasses brimming scarlet. McByrd rarely used anachronisms to garnish speech, so she remembered how her Sire had forbidden this small linguistic flourish, immediately and unpadded. _"The members of our organization are not subjects, and they are certainly not _mine_. If you must group them, say something else. Fellows. Peers." _

It was a term that filled cabinets of court transcripts she'd edited, censored and documented in these past years. Throughout Serena's tenure, the phrase "peers" appeared in crisp, careful, diplomatic droves.

Often on Annette's mind: take care talking down to a city in arms.

With the death of their final icon announced, there rose a pitiful, odious wail from the Anarch community of California. Firebombs crashed through office buildings. Company cars exploded. Newborn Ventrue left unattended were beaten bloody in the streets. Someone once shot at Serena Woeburne, letting fly a vengeful burst of gunfire over the Seneschal's head, before her personal guard flanked and dispatched them. But the uprising was patchy, disorganized. They had succumbed to pathetic, sporadic guerilla ambushes with no purpose or possible victory. This was hardly a martyr's rebellion as the Primogen feared. Instead, it was an outburst of hate from those few limping soldiers Baron Rodriguez had left at the time of time of his downfall. A transitory thing. Once the rage of mourning Brujah had burned to defeat – crumbling grey and impotent with the last LaCroix Foundation sign – they scattered from their sunken Free-State like rats into a tepid West Coast night.

Chinatown is a more insidious, long-fanged threat. Ming-Xiao has become disconcertingly quiet over the course of six months, discarding poorly drafted treaties as ink cooled on conference room tables. They spoke of it downtown constantly. Ms. Woeburne kept lockboxes stuffed with community "suggestions," surveillance video, telephone records and expenditure reports; everything told a story of frustrated imperialists about to turn conquerors. As lesser clans had learned many times – across many wars – there was only space enough for one conqueror wherever Ventrue took their lands. They circled continuously, Kuei-Jin and Camarilla; expanding legions stepped on the tails of local fiefs. It was a horrific diplomacy game. They were factions feinting a lackadaisical truce but committed to combat; they met under the pretext of peace and prepared for a siege. It was a dance secret to no one.

Serena – under the placid, spectacled watch of her own masters (though Annette knew to _never_ call any representative of ghoulish House Tremere that) – demanded all-hours border patrols. The Ancestor's recent withdrawal had their organization scrambling to parry her impending thrust, wondering with palm-covered panic: _"Is this the start? Will the next puff spark the blaze?"_ Seneschal Los Angeles stood stiff beneath the callous lighting of Nocturne Theatre and wore gloves to hide her bitten-down nails.

It is hard to tell if her efforts have any affect besides postponing real decisions. You can placate nervous senators, but you cannot hold the tide at bay with your bare hands. It will always leak through. Currents are too strong in the gut of a city abandoned. This is Los Angeles; this is The Angels.

She is not a very artistic mind, but Ms. McByrd has done her share of thinking about this, too. A metaphor that works: they are hatchlings standing at the bluff's edge. It is anyone's guess when a push will come; anyone's guess which drafts will catch them up or flush them down. But it is obvious to Annette that her maker, somber and restless and smoothing black feathers, thinks their whole clutch will founder… founder, then fall.

"_I want you to hear this, and hear it upfront. You understand that preparation is critical. It's part of the reason why you're here. But what you also have to recognize about our society is that appearances are everything. Everything,"_ Serena repeated, somber tone in a cluttered office – nine-millimeter Ruger on the mahogany, virulent green gaze. Ms. Woeburne's eyes moved too quickly; gears clicked, shifted and catalogued with an automatic, mistrustful practice. You could hear it in the silences: _tickticktick_, always processing, never stopping. Her focus was frank and frightening. Her swart hair gleaned sullen – spearlike – to the center of a rigid back. Annette wasn't afraid of her Sire, but there was something intimidating about the mature and ruthless colors of a countenance fuller than her own. There was something animal about the way she looked against all this civilization – a razor tinge to the cleanliness; a feral, paranoid energy within pressed black suits. There was preternaturalness in thin pupils and a perilous taste in the air. _ "There is nothing you will do or say within this city that cannot be considered an extension of my plans. You send messages in every action, hesitation and opinion. If you think you aren't, you _are_. Use your best judgment when the immediacy of life makes consulting me impossible; I understand the circumstances of our work shove us into accidents. Maybe I understand better than most. But wherever you stumble – because you will; inevitably, you will – realize the symbolism integral to this world. Any single decision you make will be brought against you in a multitude of ways. Keep that in mind," _she said – and paused – and slid across their coffee table that neat black-painted gun. It settled darkly. It shined against wood like a broken raven wing. _"When you use this."_

The pistol was strapped snugly beside a few of Ms. McByrd's ribs at the moment – comforting power, ice metal thorn of anxiety. She had passed the psychological benchmark where carrying a loaded weapon no longer caused discomfort. Annette was not sure she would ever wrap her mind around the possibility of being shot point-blank and surviving – not until it happened, at any rate, and the young blueblood had been fortunate enough to remain unnoticed thus far – but felt inside a strange readiness to kill. It was not a sensation that could be accounted for with words or past experiences. But that grim confidence – that instinct – was bold and well-formed just beneath her knifelike, oblong face. She sensed it as the kine herded up and down this breezy tumble of blacktop; she felt it twitch at minute movements, peculiar shadows, and bleak meetings under low bloodmoons.

"_Listen to that intuition," _Serena counseled when she mentioned this bristle-bush feeling shortly after her Embrace. They were not family, Childe and Sire – but their relationship was friendly, semi-casual, and always calmly direct. Annette phoned ahead for audiences or appointments; the administrator expected this, but called them "visits." Ms. Woeburne shared open advice and bid her progeny be comfortable. Both understood that she probably never would be. _"Forget the clichés and adages. It's preservation. It will make mistakes, but it will never betray you."_ The Seneschal's teeth were sanitized and subtle; canines, large, looked normal in the slim maroon limits of her mouth. Her accent was imperfect, but you could hear English prick the consonants when she gave instructions or ordered respect. Sometimes she got it. Others…

When their Seneschal was trivialized – those cheeky, humiliating moments in deserted auditoriums – her assertions seemed plastic, and her title gleaned dully like the glass of a two-way mirror. There was little doubt or discourse among Los Angeles's Primogen about whose visions peered through their over-ranked Foreman's guarded, stonewalled stare. The name Maximillian Strauss has always been a prestigious one in this changing metropolis; never before, however, has it triggered so much derision and self-serving politeness. Weaker status-seekers made overtures to Ms. Woeburne daily; when they stand straight and shake her cool, cleanly hand, they are kissing the rings on his. If Serena was aware of this, she gave no indication of it. If she was _not_, it may well be freezing in hell.

Being Ventrue in a Tremere's LA is precarious musical chairs. Being in-born Camarilla meant never missing a sneer, secret or mutinous misstep. The Regent (most recently Archon) presented a collar in a colleague's hood – acted as a "master" in an unconventional sense – but McByrd did not see Ms. Woeburne maneuver away from him. Among dissenters and infesters, Serena knew her Corinthian patron was the greatest potential threat to her continued existence. She also knew he was all that stood between her judge's throne and the rumbling mob. You may be able to dictate law and precedents from behind a podium; you are much less likely to kill your attacker with a gavel and book.

Though Annette figured that was why she carried a gun.

The neonate glanced along this heavy-hearted pier to where its long, flaking banister disappeared into nightfall. She pulled her bag closer, pinned defensively between both square-toed shoes. There was no covert missive inside – no bona fide summit that brought her loitering here tonight. Ms. McByrd need not concern herself with the terror of being caught, Serena assured; this unpleasant, brackish tang in the air otherwise, there was no reason to suspect she'd lied. So Annette did not outfit herself for espionage or sudden fights. She left the handgun locked inside her coat lapel. She was waiting for someone.

Santa Monica might not have menaced this evening, but to McByrd – who had lived her human life in unending motion; in aggressive, tiger-shark swathes – pausing at the _verge_ of something was the worst hurtle of all. She could feel mortality creeping. It was in stagnant nights like this one she remembered breath, sunlight on skyscrapers needles, a fiancé in Sacramento left once at the altar and again after her death. These images are still ripe, still painful, when she presses them. Generally they flit in-and-out of consciousness, because Annette has always been heartlessly good at prioritizing. Devils' politics and impressing a powerful predecessor – even a powerful puppet – are far more relevant than agonizing over freckles against frosty pillowcases or scooped grapefruit peels, happiness set aside. This is not a development of present circumstances, but the way she has always been. Usually the woman can compartmentalize it, check it, store it away for some lonely mid-morning when a monster wanted to make herself cry. Usually it can be made to feel distant, nontopical, small.

Tonight, it is on her mind.

"Sorry I'm late."

Samantha Castillo is a stumble of papers, heels and intentions never quite realized – it's how she operates, the hue in which she thinks. Seneschal LA's second creature drops her briefcase onto the bench seat before any hemisphere of her body. Leather coat holds pens, tissue, lipstick and weapon. Boot soles avoid cracks. The girl's tawny eyes are almost yellow in this forlorn quality of light; they furrow with worry, struggling self-esteem and badly-veiled suspicion. Carefully gelled springlets, windblown and harried, obscure the triangular face. She is a uniform shade of caramel brown. She is a moderate in all things. "The conference ran overtime and I had to run a file to Serena upstairs. She was already in a phone call by the time I got there, so…"

No need to finish; the shortcomings of bureaucracy are understood. Annette doesn't express sympathy or all she knows of their purpose in rendezvousing here. The elder Childe meets that troubled stare briefly – liver grazing auburn – then jerks her chin to the open bench seat.

With nothing else to do and no incentive to protest, Samantha does as she'd been told. She sits. The fledgling's stockings press together in this windy night on a staggering quay.

"Tell me something," McByrd says, command lean, more an order than an earnest inquiry.

Her junior's expression tones bewildered – warily so. "What did you want to—?"

"It doesn't matter. Look like we're busy. Don't just loiter there staring at nothing." Irritated directives are a familiar mode of interaction with this quarrelsome Associate. Her demeanor is something between esquire and unloving cousin; her voice is high, pinched, and scratches like diamond from years of public debate. Only when the Ventrue's companion beings fidgeting does she spot lipstick, glossy rose, bleeding past Castillo's mouth corners. It's sadly sophomoric, remarkably human. It takes a bite out of her intolerance. "Talk to me. There's a camera right under the third lightpost from that ticket booth. Don't look at it. Act like I'm talking about my day."

Samantha pricks with alarm, but to her credit: no head swivel, and not a single exclamation. She tugs her briefcase protectively close, buckles perched upon motionless knees. The girl always wore long necklaces over high collars and heavy breasts, silver that clinked and swung and got in the way. "Should we move?"

"Obviously not. That's why we're here." Annette's explanation is curt and frank. Almost a decade she'd been living in California; there is no trace of Massachusetts lingering in stomach or tongue, or the grunge of cramped houses, or urban classrooms with more students than chairs. She has, however, kept a Bostonian timescale. These are the woman's canonical traits – investigative, fast-paced, pragmatic, unaccommodating of naiveté – a belligerent introvert. McByrd would have made an excellent disciplinarian; as it was, she'd become deputy to a floundering delegate. There were no hard feelings. But there were also no compulsions to become a mother hen to this dizzied girl.

For all the determination and remoteness that mirrored her Sire, in this, the first Childe is more than a little like Sebastian LaCroix. Ms. McByrd knew the imperious name only through whispering seminars and things Serena did not speak to her about.

Annette glances at her almost-sibling, propped so upright in that frosty quarter of seat, poise so easily shaken. Despite occasional lapses toward pity, it has been difficult not feeling contempt in the way of more talented sisters. Annoyance, yes, and noted superiority – but not without a vein of responsibility. She would feel guilty if the youngest met a premature end, bumbling as it'd doubtless be. _"I, too, am a Ventrue. So I understand your drives, reservations, what it's like to be untested. Competition is in our nature,"_ the Seneschal had said, sitting them both in a vacant parlor with barren fire pit and spotless, chilly furniture. McByrd had looked at Samantha then much as she does now: weariness, skeletal patience, and a budding accountability. _"You will not be family. But I hope – as I hope it is with us – you will be friends."_

Annette is not sure she would call Serena her friend. Not specifically. Their relationship is too formulaic – too impersonal – to define in soft-touch terms. There are services and information exchanged, but to what purpose? Professionalism padded with mutual duty, of mentorship and apprenticehood, was not quite business or affection. If the trade stopped, however, their attachment would not; their ties were private without being intimate. Childe did not profess every fear and regret to Sire, but in most ways, she trusted Ms. Woeburne. Annette found consolation in the lack of reasons this older monster had to harm her; relied on the past nature of their relations; believed that her own best interests were also in Seneschal LA's. Serena could be confided in, approached. But they were not and would not be friends. Distance was mandated by the power difference; respect demanded the space.

She has ample respect, if not warmth, for the serious and circumspect official that is her ancestor. Annette suspects they all feel similarly – all three demons in a tree.

"_Whatever you'd like. Just call me Serena,"_ had been her answer to the tentative question: _how do I address you? _Childe did as she was instructed, a mundane name for a woman whose body was younger than hers, mind much older. So Ms. Woeburne was Serena and her own posture didn't matter on those quiet, scheduled, unwieldy meetings. Comfort rituals and honor gestures were minimal details. Successes mattered more.

"_I don't think I can do this,"_ Samantha had confessed to her so-called friend one night shortly after induction, a strange little sorority, desperate as it was bizarre. The girl had been needlessly winded, chestnut eyes puffy and damp. She had made vague descriptions of tasks and stressors, the fundamentals of business, when asked what it was specifically the neonate could not do. Even then, there was incomplete faith between them. Annette had few personal revelations on Miss Castillo at that early time in their sinister sisterhood, but knew Serena better than to permit true kinship between unripe undead.

Behind those startled stares – greener than mantis juice; twice as lethal – and disarming awkwardness, their matron is a brutally shrewd, distrusting kingpin. She had enlisted her first progeny as a means to carry out footwork no longer appropriate for spotlit spokespersons. The second had only one obligation – limited – but no less critical, and no less clear: _watch her_. Ms. Woeburne had learned this strategy from her own shortcomings and a Prince's haughty Waterloo. So syrupy Samantha – brow hitched, glimpses fretful, feet crunching eggshells – asked timid questions, needed help, and endangered her forerunner's life.

Annette had been pulled from a courthouse lot on someone's recommendation, but it was uncertain exactly where Serena had recruited Ms. Castillo, and she hadn't cared enough to ask. The girl had been midway through an advanced degree. Psychology – what a useless occupation. But McByrd could appreciate how the study of flimsy (or traitorous) minds might benefit a woman like their Sire. And Ms. Woeburne probably wanted someone she could control with minimum effort.

"What exactly is going on, Annette?" She tried calling her _Annie_ when they first met; the nickname did nothing but earn hidden glowers and obvious antagonism. Almost one year Samantha had been at Serena's directive – just recently had she managed to flatten that sophomoric, nasally warble from her voice. Thank God for small miracles. McByrd thought her junior sounded like a flirty sorority girl… which, incidentally, wasn't too far off from what that woman was. It would've been insulting had their warder not nagged her youngest about the impropriety of sounding twenty, but thankfully, she did. _"Don't be filial,"_ Ms. Woeburne would say, gently but persistently. _"It is 'yes,' not 'yeah'; 'hello,' not 'hey.' I don't mean to be your mother. But this is a simple fix, and it will gain you more credit than you'd guess."_

The word "mother" on Serena's teeth had jarred both of them more than any speaking lesson slid in. Nothing fit her less.

"If you have to ask…" But there's no use to making life trickier for her partner – not at the moment, anyway. Annette reconsiders with flattened lips. "Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, Samantha. You can do that. Look down towards the café – right down this street. We're watching for someone; see anything suspicious, nudge me."

"Who are we-?" McByrd's irritated look answered enough. Ms. Castillo wisely swallows her questions and leans uneasily back against bench iron. Nonetheless: "I hope we aren't supposed to _talk_ to anyone, at least," the fledgling adds unhappily, forced to find her small victories in complaints. Cold hands wipe a bit of condensation off her sleeves. Expensive hide wrinkles in this humid season; she wilts on a humid coast. "I don't have anything prepared; I'll blow it."

"No talking. She would have told me. Just watch."

"Are you sure? Seems odd to need both of us for something like that." It's an accurate observation, actually, something this bitter first Childe doesn't lend credit for often enough. Unfortunate that she made it with bottom lip sucked beneath those large top teeth. You could almost still see the cappuccino stains from life; almost smell latte and overpriced teas. "There has to be more to it. I knew I should have asked her about this before heading out here; I literally brought _nothing_ with me. Nothing at all. I don't even have a recorder."

"Didn't I just say…" But Annette can't finish the sentence before Samantha's elbow gouges right beneath her floating ribs.

Without looking overeager, reminding herself of disinterest, McByrd waits ten long seconds to twist. Then she scans the smoky shop, eyes picking – past rows of surfboards, sunscreen vendors, tourist paraphernalia and postcard hutches – to that cramped outdoor coffee kiosk. Café de Côte; the waterlogged place's name is too pretentious for its location and the taupe décor carries a permanent grit of sand. Java, cranberry muffins and mushroom soup wind oddly with all the tawdrier scents of a pier – seaweed, Styrofoam, lite alcohol. Poor placement and slow business deserts it at such an obscure hour of night. There are a few beach party stragglers, though, corneas glazed with the grueling expressions of the suddenly sober; there are two bored baristas chatting wearily behind powder stacks of instant decaf; there is a writer scribbling something important into her napkin. And beyond them all – unremarkable, unimposing – a single man sits, dressed conservatively, portfolio case clicking the table and hands folded behind his slick dishwater hair. He is the only client that begins to fits what this venue wants to be. A gold watch flashes around thick wrists; cufflinks twinkle beneath bug lamps. He's extraordinarily pale. He seems roughly forty in age, deceptively at leisure, and is made bold with an air of blueblood self-assurance.

"Isn't that Duncan?" Samantha asks, a redundant question, whispering without following visually. One needn't squint to recognize him. This agent's face is fresher than his years, smooth and animate, kind genetics coupled with a kinder bank account. You could tell that buoyant aura was a pre-planned projection. You could tell he'd watched one too many spy flicks as a younger man. "What's Duncan doing here?"

Annette narrows. Duncan Leslie is a recent addition to Los Angeles: a frank-talking, eager-to-please company negotiator who alternates between polishing apples for Board members and shining Ms. Woeburne's shoes. Serena was not taken in by obsequious manners and willingness to do a Seneschal's odd jobs, however. She occasionally enlists him in minor discussions or as a conference aid – not from belief or esteem, but out of the realization how quickly idle Ventrue become dangerous. Ms. McByrd remembered the last assignment she'd completed with him: a meaningless, trifling welcome party to escort their Praetor's Childe home from reconnaissance in San Bernardino. The unfriendly man they'd been sent to assist proved every bit as scowling, brunette and fractious as his Sire – same hyper-focused demeanor, same short cut, same vaguely thirty countenance. (Conscious or unconscious, Mark Lindell could not have come closer to Embracing himself if he'd bitten a clone). And she recalled being unsure whom the chatty, inflated toady that was her accomplice aggravated more between them. Every step, every pause, had been forked to fragments by over-amiable jokes or the flat clap of large feet.

"He's not our concern," Annette decides; she keeps him pinned in her peripherals nonetheless. "Hold still for now."

And they did so – for another twenty minutes – before a more viable target slunk in.

"Hey, hey. What about him?" Samantha was referring to the broad-shouldered boy who just plodded into Café de Côte, rolled sleeves and buckles clashing with the establishment's half-baked class. Ms. McByrd had looked his direction long before her associate chimed in. She studies swiftly and mercilessly. He is a trenchcoat with no face; you could barely see the blunt ridges of chin, brows, a sloped nose. That's all she needs, though. The stranger takes one quick glimpse around before striding up to Leslie with ominous gusto and drawing out a chair. You could not decipher every feature from where they currently sat – Annette has to make do with the back of a black-haired head – but that saunter and his certainty were enough. He does not accept Duncan's handshake. He glares the offending arm down.

"That's our guy," Annette agreed. A frond itches her forehead that she doesn't pin back. The color is outrageous; smart detectives would have worn a hat. "Don't let him out of your sight."

That order given, she pulls a cellular out of one pocket, angles her shoulder just enough to blockade camera contact, and begins typing.

**To: Serena  
We've established eye contact. He is in the building now. Instructions?**

Maybe four minutes pass before the jump of an answer quakes her pocket. McByrd knows better than to jeopardize their anonymity; the older Ventrue does not look towards Café de Côte again, but her dusky eyes skirt towards Samantha's gaze. It is frozen sidelong at that pathetic, innocuous table where two Kindred met over ash trays and business still unknown.

Annette opens the text message.

**You are absolutely positive?  
-W**

**Yes**, she replies. Another few seconds sweep by in a gust of cool seaside air. None of them move.

**Who is with him?  
-W**

The response is certain and mechanical.

**Duncan Leslie. **

"What did she say?" Samantha begs, a hiss through clenched teeth, sight anxiously trained on the man she did not recognize. Annette ignores her pesterings as did she the information their Sire somehow had. They could not rush; they had to wait for its relevance. The woman's collarbone glows pointing and gamey beneath light both electric and wild. The girl's hands are balled tight on either side. "What are you talking about?"

That _feeling_ – that indefinite twinge beneath the strap of breastbone and gun.

There is a surf crash and a dancer's laugh that echo across the pier. Castillo cheek-bites beside her. It's all a hurricane lip, a straw on a camel, a mundaneness that seeps from the cinnamon of overpriced cafés. Someone was bringing Leslie water he wouldn't drink. Skateboard wheels snapped. Yellow bulbs, moon face, neon wound nauseously into the ominous dark down that asphalt walk into Pacific Ocean. She tries to displace it – to shake this odd stitch off, but she can't. She can't; it has taken root; it is inside, within, emergent; it breathes like old legend jungles and manufactures a pulse. Annette does not know what it is, but it is _something_.

It is on her mind.

The phone buzzes. She opens.

There is only one word.

**Run.  
-W**

Annette grabs for Samantha's arm, and they are roughly to foot – and they are scrambling – and it is seventeen steps up Santa Monica Pier when everything _thunders _behind them.

_GAS LEAK, _the papers read on Tuesday morning. _Gas leak_. She has always been one to throw the paper out.

Annette McByrd does not know everything. The Seneschal's pup is only a Childe in this centuries-old game of chess and roulette. But even children can peel their eyes; even children can wake to the carnivorous sounds and sixth senses around them. She sees a hundred things: politics unbolted, fiends unmade, fire light black sky, five dozen sinister decisions and the glass of them strike flint on Serena Woeburne's face. She sees the cluelessness on Duncan Leslie's grin, the way that coat does not quite sit right on his unnamed visitor's shoulders. She sees lives wiped out by a salvo of dynamite – and once combusions end and screaming stops, they all see how softly blistering concrete sinks back into creases of dark, roaring winter water.

Ventrue Childer do not believe mortal excuses any more than this city itself. Los Angeles does not blink, does not sleep; it is a haven aware of its beasts. You cannot fool it with civil smile or masquerade. You cannot show it any face but the hungry one you wear.

Los Angeles is no child.

The Angels know better than that.

* * *

**LA PUCELLE **

_Now I'll shake thy bulwarks to the ground.  
- I Henry VI (3.2)_

* * *

_**A/N**_**: You know what they say about sequels. But have one anyway. **

**(Yes, it's turtle Samantha.) **


	2. To Look Forward

**To Look Forward**

The fire was burning at 961 Mirada Lane.

It's a pretentious, intemerate neighborhood – a commercial _Los Angeles_ place, where the color is stucco white and a palm leaf has never hit pool water. Palos Verdes is a district built so that the quiet rich may marinate in their wealth without needing spotlights, charisma, or love of attention. Perfect Lang Oaks cluster out noise. Modern block mansions forego photography. A bit of carefully-controlled forest sprawl mutes sun and interested eyes that might walk the empty, immaculate sidewalks winding through these thick scrub trees in the far west halo of metropolitan lights. This is not lurid Hollywood, pompous Bel Air, spray-on Malibu, orange-skin Beverly with preposterous wives who hide silicone hearts. It is middle-aged, insular, the affluent introvert. It is scrubbed clear of personality. It has no smells but eucalyptus and washed asphalt. Their lawns are made of red rock and chlorine rather than grass; their neighbors are far, quarantined by parkland and golf course; their backs are framed by Pacific brine. Palos Verdes is a fortress. The dirt of LA bounces off brick edifice, tall barricades, and the square shadows of emotionless homes.

Palos Verdes is where Seneschal Woeburne does her business now – in a three-story estate, down a dark private lane, where the nimbus of downtown distantly burns and misquotes hum louder than her surveillance cameras. This is not an address to art tour or wander by. _Sinister money_, the neighbors must think: mob or drugs or murderous fraud. Drivers arrive at late hours, black corporate cars lost in the black night; they park, they leave; yet you never seem to see people living in that cool, joyless home. You never hear celebrations or music. There are no flowers on these grounds, no sanded patio, no cute garage over the asphalt driveway five cars-wide. There is no surround-sound stereo or gazebo for weekend parties. It is dry crabgrass surrounded by nine vertical feet of piked metal fence. The windows are tinted. The house as pristine and unfriendly as the ominous needle trees that cluster along her narrow street to ward eyes away.

When he stepped into the masculine office on floor one – presidential dome, wood floor, white walls made with towering glass – Isaac Abrams did not particularly notice the iron fireplace, nor does he know Serena Woeburne well enough to call its burning odd.

There is a square of claret carpet beneath the place where Seneschal Los Angeles stands, just before her flawless desk, no fingerprints on black enamel. She is slightly less flawless; just as unthinkingly cold. These are qualities that discern her, so authoritarian and so very clean: severe lines colored on a soft face; thin mouth reddened; suit collar impeccably folded; neat, trimmed nails on ringless hands. Her hair is heavy, combed straight and morose brown. Her eyes are an intensive, pernicious green and race when they read. The small, forced smile when this politician greets you – the overcompensating _crush_ of her fingers – the brusque, shoulder-first way she moves are full of pith and vim. She shakes two-dozen hands a night and signs off on ten more ledgers. She has no time to dawdle. Serena Woeburne's management in this district mirrors her demeanor and her frame: it is compact, decisive, and does not drag its feet.

That's how Los Angeles has been for the past few years. Its Seneschal is always tired, you can tell – always tired, sockets bruised – but slaps herself into manic, hair-trigger alertness every evening. She carries an aroma of artificial mint: toothpaste, hygiene, conditioner. She does not grandstand. She's too ineffective to be anything but plain-faced and blunt.

She's a showdog trotting pretty on a short leash, Isaac's said – publically – and this opinion is evident in both his smirk and her prim, measured, distasteful welcome grin.

"Mr. Abrams," Woeburne greeted, set aside her handheld computer, and rose from where she'd been propped upon a sharp edge of mahogany desk. There were buttons fastened up to the collarbone of snug, conservative dress. There was a knowingness about her expression that teased, an unfunny inside joke. "I'm glad to see you. Make yourself at home."

Baron Hollywood was not impressed by Ventrue barrenness nor by the way 961 Mirada Lane glistened – vacant hallways, darkwood floor, painted banisters, every inch polished to the single pewter chandelier chained above its foyer. It smells impeccably kept: chemical, barely lived-in. The upper levels are hushed and lightless. You see but do not hear the guardsmen making their rounds.

Fire simmers in its well-kept place. It whispers warmth along the western wall.

Isaac stepped into the office, strolling through its open archway with grey sports coat pockets casually full of his hands, and she shut both doors behind them herself. The quiet is daunting and deceptive. Bare hardwood. Blockish modernism. Rich ovaled panels, white-paned windows, unused furniture meant to scare. It is an embarrassingly federal place to work. This is how flowering Ventrue like to style themselves, however… and it is a change of pace from her predecessor's colonialism, marble and unsoiled gold.

"Am I too early?" he asked, not really caring, but entertained to make politeness a game. Oh, yes; Sebastian LaCroix's physical influence has been mindfully clipped from the new administrator's house. It seems the Toreador's eyes are indeed the only flash of gold in this place – serene, clever, half-lidded to assert power through disinterest. He is confident and cavalier with slack shoulders and comfortable shoes. He is not intimidated by any sort of wealth or pedigree, no matter how blue.

"Hardly," Ms. Woeburne told him, words short and orderly; she sounded like someone's Prince two centuries too late. The accent was a crisp and inconsistent chirp upon a flat base. The pitch found its place in the staid, brisk, tightly-wound middle. A perfect voice for a rule-bound woman like this whose job it was to be everyone's friend. "I was just thinking about you. Have a seat, if you'd like. I'm sure you're busy this evening, so I won't take long to say what needs to be said." She pulled 'round and pushed an uncushioned chair towards him. "It's been such an awfully long time."

"Depends on your threshold for 'long,'" Isaac couldn't help needling, and slowly rounded the offered furniture before sitting in it.

"I suppose I can't argue with that."

And she didn't. Her modest heels clicked decisively, disdainfully, into the bare wood floor.

"You have heard, then, the latest about Santa Monica," Ms. Woeburne noted needlessly, poking for comment, perching her skirt seat back on the desk edge. That desk is more familiar than the occupant. Venture Tower's assets were liquidated and reinvested within several months of their previous Prince's departure, as were most of his overseas belongings; this was done so at the surviving Childe's behest (at least, so rumors claim). But she made them get her his desk. Six years into this limping, holdover government, and there is not an extra scratch upon the obsidian. Paper scraps and fingerprints wipe off easily enough. The Seneschal leaves little trace of herself behind.

As unripened eyes watched from across this stuffy room, they show pretense of control – but Serena Woeburne's subconscious is very aware how transient her name in LA's leadership is.

"Obviously. Your solution to my lead wasn't exactly subtle."

"But necessary," the Seneschal intoned, to which Baron Abrams merely shrugged. His long legs were too tall for the squat, sturdy chair.

"Not really my call to make. I'm not generally a fan of culling my own, particularly through 'arrangements'… but your people did get the job done." He stifled a fake yawn and shot her a pointed, scrutinizing look. Hollywood's face was a composition of purified metals: irises coin, sneer ivory, brows proudly silver. His body was relaxed. His posture was disrespectfully poor. "To our mutual satisfaction, I trust."

"Yes. They're good people." She paused. She abandoned the brace of her inherited desk – permanently now – standing firm beneath his flippant brush of eye contact. "And this transaction paves the way to dialogue, I hope. We are both practical creatures, Baron… certainly practical enough to appreciate your outreach. It was generous of you to contact me about the mole. And tonight, seeing as you and I have freed our taskforces of that troublesome development, perhaps we can begin speaking about this one."

"This 'troublesome development?'" Isaac's snort of laughter was unkind. He checked his watch again.

Woeburne grinned. "Well. You have been a bit difficult."

"It's been a difficult journey – asked to cut cards with an old enemy's prefect. You understand if I wasn't jumping to join your meetings."

"Naturally I don't hold the caution against you. Just a little joke. All that might warrant forgiveness has already been forgiven," she said to the man who had shunned her overtures for the past half-decade. To have him sitting in this office was a significant victory for the Seneschal, he was sure. He had not bothered to wear a tie. Serena blinked attentively and ignored a knock at the door. "I am glad to be speaking with you. And I would be exceedingly glad to count Hollywood amongst my…" There was a twist of humor as she searched for the word. "Non-detractors," Ms. Woeburne decided, smirk skewing the serious set of that narrow red mouth.

"Consider my being here as openness to that idea."

"I already do. Else I wouldn't be as sunny."

Isaac chuffed at the blueblood attempt to be coy.

"I didn't hear. Did your Childer make it off the beach all right?" A disingenuous, lazy attempt to change the subject, but one this Camarilla's mouthpiece accepted. She walked behind him for a moment as though to retrieve something from a skinny, top-heavy bookshelf. A brush of her palm across liquored ledge came away with the only dust in this room. Serena frowned quickly at it, wrinkles folding up the unforgiving bridge of Ventrue nose.

"Yes, they did. Thank you for asking," she remarked, pulling a tissue and wiping her fingers clean. "I dislike placing neonates in danger, but all's well that ends well. Please don't take the extra eyes as a sign of distrust. Your information was sufficient to confirm _someone_ from my party had been dealing under the table, but I was interested in knowing exactly who the traitor was before pulling their trigger. Who better to place my confidence in than my own? And their presence there did good work at masking mine."

It was a common ploy, albeit reptilian of new Sires: place one's own progeny at the disaster scene, show your fingerprints – and in doing so, distract public attention from the fact you orchestrated it all. Ms. Woeburne's relative incapacity furthered her cause quite a lot in this regard. As did the expressiveness on her descendants' faces…you could flip through pier security camera footage and read sudden shock, mortal realizations, in how those peeking girls fled. It was obvious they'd been planted to spy; spies from Seneschals' offices were to be expected. Such small infractions were comfortingly predictable. Their visibility and what appeared to be two fledglings' near-death experience made Serena's meddling clear, however, in a way that looked like mundane snooping to outside eyes. Every _bang_ in Los Angeles outed at least five unrelated Ventrue spies. The actual culprits hid their tracks better. They chose real agents – not awkward, greenhorn younglings trotting along and trying to pry.

But you'd be surprised how fine a cover awkward, greenhorn younglings are for the real agents – ghouls, perhaps, that wire bombs in the magic witching hours of five-through-six AM.

"How is Ash?" Woeburne sidetracked. "I've heard he had a spot of trouble recently."

"He is well healed, and none of your business."

"Of course not. I apologize."

She moved back to the desk, slid a wastebasket out with one foot, and dropped the dusty Kleenex in. Serena did not sit. Six years of this: of a Seneschal standing before her elders, Sire's verdict unknown, succession postponements, titles dangling in the interim of being delayed so a more prudent man might reign unchallenged. Isaac has ignored most of it by refusing her councils and invitations. And he's been anything but alone in spurning Strauss's newest chess piece; Hollywood joins Voerman Properties, Alistair Grout and (until tonight, if she draws the right cards) Gary Golden's rats. Woeburne has played it smart, but her wait-and-see diplomacy is stupid, as are many of the things her new Board has suggested. Better leaders have little to gain in parlaying with the transparent decoys of Clan Tremere.

Times do change, however… as the news of Abrams's personal bouncer swapping surveillance tapes with some Scepter pissant made obnoxiously clear. Occasionally one must stoop to tolerating Camarilla annoyances when private treachery is a concern. This is a decisive, unenthusiastic attempt at bridging the gap downtown that doesn't seem to be closing any time soon.

"Your people are no doubt suspicious – for many reasons – but I'm sure you've placed yourself beyond reproach. And it seems I have, as well. Sabbat aren't exactly unusual scapegoats," the woman added gingerly as her house fireplace released a loud, destructive pop. It's a rarity; Seneschal Woeburne does not play with flame, nor derive enjoyment from watching danger roil helplessly behind cage bars. The heat furls, unfolds, swells its gasoline moorings orange and then collapses. Over and over – a process that repeats, for Ventrue Childer and for burning wood.

"So long as you've convinced the Primogen of this as much as you've convinced yourself, I won't complain."

"It wasn't what I'd call a hard sell. Not with the way their stragglers have been behaving. The Culver pack will likely take credit once investigations close. Our issue seems to have made a few wakes in the suburbs."

"Explosions tend to. I've only had a few inquiries filed, however, and none with the bunk to actually press." The Baron rubbed his knuckles over a buttoned lapel. His rectangular, chiseled face appeared mild and somewhat bored. "It was deft work. You surprised me."

"Thank you," she said – simply, forwardly – a small, sharp smile of small, sharp teeth.

Isaac Abrams had seen a hundred Camarilla deputies by this point in his illustrious Free-State career. Some bit harder than others and some ran faster. Some were a little better-bred. But, like all loyal pets, Seneschals rise and fall at the convenience of their masters. So when Ms. Woeburne's tidy teeth clicked together in that impotent, apple-pie smile, it was important to remember she had burned another Baron to the ground.

The seatholder watched him, waiting. She stood behind her progenitor's workspace with spine straight, chin level, fingers clasped politely before her stomach – nonthreatening, female, ears open and mind whirring fast. The stance is a backwards mirror of how Prince Los Angeles would brood with both hands behind his back like an unhappy soldier. Her persistent slight smile is his endless slight frown. Ms. Woeburne is a cardboard placeholder, a town crier for a king-witch who doesn't want to wear his crown. She echoes greatness not her own – posture inverse of Sebastian LaCroix, but a character created by him. Those chartreuse eyes flicked twice up-and-down in analysis; the brief, critical, Ventrue head-to-toe; the one you could never tell between mentally undressing you and deconstructing your lies.

_Mirada Lane_. She spoke no Romance languages; did not know or care how that name was reflecting upon her.

Isaac heaves a sigh and rummages deep into his trouser pocket. "I imagine you're still interested in my end of our little fair trade."

"I did dissolve the fraternizers myself, so… yes."

The Baron pulled a scrap of notebook paper, scribbled this morning, seven secret digits that change every forty-eight hours. He shook his head with a grumble for pretenses. He rocked up from the uncomfortable grips of that chair. She picked up and held out a telephone receiver across the place Sebastian LaCroix penned Blood Hunts; its dial tone filled the otherwise silent room.

He should have noticed the way her pupils widened, then – catlike interest, malicious and blood-hungry. He should have noted how they breathed in and enveloped the flame.

"Understand I don't guarantee he'll cooperate," Isaac warned, vaguely towering over her at full height, loose-limbed and apathetic. He was a hundred actors, a dozen characters, melted together; he was Bogart, Pacino, _Goodfellas_, Fedora-and-Pearl Era. His dominion was fueled by honey, whim and other men who died on upon their guns. "You can't guarantee anything about him. Except, perhaps, that he'll find this very irritating of me."

Isaac took the telephone, punched in numbers, and called. He hung up after exactly two rings and dialed back.

"Nice greeting," the Toreador quipped to that sinuous, snide, snickering voice hidden somewhere beneath Los Angeles. It stopped racking shivers up his spine ages ago, but that did not bar the aversion or managed disgust. "Sorry you wasted it. Believe it or not: it's me. Guess you've figured out where I'm standing right now." He released a single chuckle born in incredulity and dislike. Ms. Woeburne did not flinch at the dismissal. She snap-froze that meager, inexpressive, enduring smile. "You're telling me. Exactly. I'm sure you won't appreciate this, but _here's the breaks_, _kid_. Ran into a stumbling block on the homefront last week. To get out of it clean, I made a bargain with the devil's clerk… and her payment was a conversation with you."

A silence, a clear clack-smack laughter across the line, a cringe of distaste as Abrams uncaringly thrust the receiver back.

"Here's what you wanted. He's all yours, Seneschal."

The Ventrue mouthed _thank you_, dipped a nod, and took it with her frosty, eager claws.

"Gary," she said, an animated tone, an affable face, a stare that never left Isaac Abrams even as Ms. Woeburne spoke. There was nothing odd about that greeting. He should have suspected something right at the moment Golden's first name hit the stuffy, goosepimple air. "Hello. Yes. Hah. Well, what can I tell you? Somehow I managed it. Very good. Fine." A victorious crinkle ghosted beneath the Seneschal's toxic left eye. "You already saw that I have."

Baron Hollywood could not say he cared much for whatever business Serena Woeburne thought she had with a Nosferatu patriarch. Isaac rolled his neck, rolled his eyes, rolled the scrap of now-useless notebook into a paper ball within his blazer pocket. There was a clock on the wall, framed right above that traditional fireplace, and it secondhand flick pinched his brow together. You could barely hear the gears inside, but you knew they were there, just beyond the exterior gloss, manic and anxious and chipping forever away one instant at a time. White hands and green eyes across the black of a dictator's desk. _Ticktickticktick_.

"I hope the verification is satisfactory," she told Gary as Abrams's ear switched back from the trapped blaze to a conversation between noble and fiend. Thickly painted lips moved with precision that should have disconcerted; observant gaze flickered between desktop and her idle, distinguished guest. "Absolutely. Could you hold please? The wait won't be long."

She pressed a button and set down the telephone.

"Happy?" Isaac wondered.

Her face glowed of good news and gambits kept. He had said so many dismissive things about that face and its short-lived, sham tenure over downtown Los Angeles. "Euphoric."

Ms. Woeburne was teething; Ms. Woeburne was underage; Ms. Woeburne did not pack the punch.

"Then I guess I'll saunter out and leave you to your new acquaintance," Baron Abrams announced, not so much a goodbye as a frank declaration of his departure. Too much time and patience had been wasted here already. Too much lenience had been mustered in the cloistered confines of this solemn, unimaginative house.

"That's probably for the best. Thank you, Isaac." She traveled back around the threatening furniture to address him fully, her steps self-assured, her smile more durable than this junior misanthrope's kangaroo court. Her shoulder pads were a half-inch too wide. At close distance, her shadowed cheeks gave their humanness away. "For your outreach, your information, and your open mind. I don't expect us to become fast friends, Mr. Abrams. But I do hope we can be good neighbors. Uphold peace in your district, and you can be sure we'll pay you the same courtesy."

"Your candor is noted."

"The same." Ms. Woeburne shook Hollywood's large beringed hand. Her fingers were domineering, palm temperature low, clench undeterred by the onyx stones and gold band he wore. "I won't embarrass you with personal admiration or my attempts to persuade. Simply know that I do appreciate our conference tonight. This city has sorely missed your voice." It is a self-serving but truthful piece of praise.

Flattery was only a mild pleasure for a man who'd spent his life writing grants and financing the business of petty beasts. Isaac did not reward easy tributes or selfish sweet talk. His harrumph, however, was not unamused. "I may consider showing up to the next function."

"I'd like that," she said, and showed him the door.

Men from his era did not need to gloat. He closed it, leaving Ventrue diplomacy standing in its supercilious office with unsigned treaties and a pleasant face. Their farewell had passed in a matter of seconds – no longer than sixty – from false Ventrue geniality to fatcat Toreador leer. He walked off into the temperate, almost-cold black of Los Angeles night.

One more second: the small, impotent smile evaporated from her mouth.

"Ms. Woeburne." The single guardsman who stepped in behind him was nondescript and camouflaged by the dour woodwork of this place. Serena did not divert her needlepoint stare from where it froze at the grey stitching across Baron Hollywood's unperturbed, indifferent back. She did not release her pent-up breath. She did not move, and did not reply to the deep, grim voice that reported to her side. "I've come to inform you that Isaac Abrams has just stepped off the property. As you requested, Archon Strauss is on line two with Claudia Fairholm. They both vote red. We are about to patch Mr. Golden through."

The Seneschal's bearing stiffened. The insignificant face in the black suit waited for clearance. The clock on the far wall turned.

"Harold Embry is waiting for a go-order, Ms. Woeburne."

_Tickticktickticktick_.

"Ms. Woeburne."

Her elocution is excellent. Her tone is genteel. Her lineage is manifest in the certainty of this sentence and the good corporal thrust of a narrow chin.

"Kill him," she said.

The attendant nodded, words excessive, then stepped out with resolute motion and a cellular phone in his hand.

961 Mirada Lane is terrible cleanness. The fire kept burning through the long night.

* * *

**_Author's Note_: There is no Mirada Lane in LA. On the wild off-chance you live near Via Mirada, though:  
1. I'm sorry I called your hood intemerate.  
2. I'm super sorry you have to live next to Woeburne. **

**While Serena's Childer will play significant roles, I wouldn't call them **_**the**_** title characters. LP's more mature tone means doing things a little differently this time. We'll get a direct tap back into W's mind eventually. But because Ventrue are famously business-before-pleasure: let her set this new dynamic up for you, piece by piece, and then maybe she'll open her headspace again. **

** Don't fret if you're not clear on all the background workings in this chapter; I'd, um. Be worried if you were. You didn't miss anything; the cause-and-effect context is just coming in multiple courses rather than one big bowl.  
**

**Thanks, everyone, for your continued support! You guys are the best.**


	3. We Two

**We Two**

"Harold just died!" Samantha announced, elbowing into Annette's modest apartment on its quiet western block of South Arroyo.

"What?"

"Harold died," the woman repeated, a routineness to her disclosure that might have unnerved. Breathlessness and energy invigorated the bleached browns of young Ventrue face. Those toffee spit-curls bounced over both shoulders as Ms. Castillo fully entered her associate's room and fussed at the ecru turtleneck beneath rain-wet leather lapels. "Someone shot him," she elaborated, not celebrating the news, but enjoying her job as bad news reporter. A few drops flung from tucked cuffs to speckle carpetless wood. "He's dead."

"That's funny." Annette's observation – about which there was nothing funny, at all – rang flat. She did not bother looking up from the flurry of transcripts upon her cup-spotted dining table. She had barely bothered getting dressed today: oversized, off-white tee; gym shorts; messy, wet tangle of hair; no socks. One hooklike hand bent a snakelight closer to infuriatingly tiny text. Shrewish fingers flipped a page. "So is Tom. What's-his-name. Jennings, Jackson, Jeffery. The carport third shift," was all she could think of. Samantha stared dully at the back of a sloppy fire-red French knot.

The home where most of these conversations ended was a stern, serious one-bedroom with no windows and walls painted in unobtrusive cream. It is not what one might expect of their imperious clan or this wealthy Astroturf strip of the Arroyos. No art or crystal or gold; no diamond clutter or marble or pompous décor. There were very few divisions in this place to stumble through with arms full of binders and sometimes buckshot. The cheap pecan floor ran uninterrupted through every threshold. The unused kitchen spilt immediately into a living room with little character: one stiff grey couch, one plush chair, one circular table where one obdurate Childe did the majority of her paperwork. Her bedroom and bathroom proved equally cool, dark, uninviting, colorless. Lamps jutted tall and unfriendly. Dreary jackets hung between the black front door and a stove she's never turned on. A rack had been reserved for her holster strap. It's an abode that looks unfinished, in-between owners, never quite made her own with the personal artifacts that Ms. McByrd stopped noticing long before her first death.

All in all, it has been a suitable workspace. Annette liked keeping the lights low; she appreciated dim, warm ambience to sink her stress headaches into, retreating to easy comfort with _B+_ in coffee mugs, softly humming television, and clove in hot bathwater. She never played music and wore nothing on the flattish planes of her pale, freckled feet. Her mirrors were pretentious and oddly-shaped, but they were the only snobbish indulgence. Ms. McByrd rarely employed them. She owned exactly three nice suits and maybe two shawls that passed. She reserved her energy for ephemeral things.

"Tom Genovese?" Samantha asked, unwinding her scarf and stuffing messily it into a pocket. Annette nodded distractedly with an eyeful of Board names and a sip of lukewarm blood.

Put out but with nothing to do about it, the younger fledgling warily plopped herself across that unkempt table, anxious lips and silver stick. Her arms folded up upon a small nook of free space. There was a warm laptop between them, framed by mountains of cheap printer paper, scattered beneath pencil shavings. Annette did not like pens for their permanence; she always wanted leeway to correct a mistake. Serena did not like the smudge marks, but let small bothers slide for the sake of smooth, unruffled relationships. Graphite smears were easier to dust from your sleeves than the pettiness of servants snubbed.

The Seneschal's eldest Childe tried to adopt a similar policy when it came to this shambling girl. More often than not, she would burst into her nimble senior's home with no knock and no advance notice, still caught in the days of dorm rooms. She'd drop her heavy clothes and bristle off the weather; be comfortable in ways undead things shouldn't be. Annette used to get _very_ irritated about this, and more irritating than anything else was that Samantha simply didn't understand the problem of treating one's haven like an all-hours sleepover. Eventually, both compromised. Castillo learned to pay respect by being quieter and helpful at chores. McByrd had almost trained her into calling ahead of time, and in turn, shrank the fierce animosity she used to feel into annoyed, apathetic grumbles. It was a peaceful level of companionship – an acceptable arrangement.

Less admitted but no less true: perhaps it was also preferable to lifetimes left in professional silence. Their Sire was amiable enough, but frightfully private, and Ms. Woeburne's company came only at her convenience.

So these two teething witches were quite often a pair. Off-duty and on, their divergent purposes could be set aside for the support of mutual risk.

Samantha spent very little time within her own residence, a tiny but well-decorated loft squeezed by the scrub trees of Bunker Hill. Annette thought it unsurprising that Serena kept her casual spy physically closer than she did the real agent. The young blueblood did not begrudge her maker this wisdom, either; it was a small offense, one that lightly suggested distrust rather than trumpeted it with constant surveillance or phone line taps. Ms. McByrd had heard a rumor one of Claudia Fairholm's Childer recently embezzled a rather large sum of money from her Sire's personal accounts and attempted to flee LA with it; the unsuccessful culprit now wore a tracking anklet wherever she went.

And it must also be said that politicians with histories as fresh as Serena's would be stupidly forgiving to trust anybody.

"Did something happen at the house?" Samantha demanded, disturbed by a murder so close-to-home, momentarily forgetting the excitement of her own disclosure. Real concern furrowed those skinny brows. "Is everyone OK? Why didn't I hear about this?"

"What _happened_ at the house is that the carport third shift disappeared." Annette turned a page. The auburn of her gaze looked maliciously orange reading from behind monitor light. Her hands were thorny and brave nose terribly, roguishly sharp. "And it's not exactly news."

Taking sixty seconds to stew upon a pithier Ventrue's analysis, the girl frowned herself into theorizing. It was a halfcocked and uncoordinated theory, feeling more pressure to try than instinct to fret, but McByrd figured these juvenile guesses were a positive sign. She was learning. A slow-grower, perhaps, but one determined to mature. "Maybe he's the one who killed Harold, then. If the politicians are trying to keep it quiet. If this was an internal move against Serena-"

"Doubt it. He reported to her last night, or so I've been led to believe." _Flick_. "Not that it matters."

"But doesn't it? I'd think we'll be investigating this one. Not _we_, specifically," she was sure to backpedal. "Just 'us.' She'll want clearer answers. Serena wouldn't let a double-death slip under the rug. Think about it, Ann." This casual prompt and unwanted name made the older cub's teeth bite together, lashes narrow. Her large, shapeless sweater showed a bare shoulder, dappled and gaunt. "What if the whole thing is more Board intrigue? After last month – that whole forum disaster – it would make sense. What if this was some kind of takeover bid?"

Annette's breath was curt and irate through her nostrils. She had "thought about" situations like their current one more than long enough to know they could be _anything_ devised by _anyone_. The interviews and evidence hunts that followed killings absorbed great focus, and even then, were often breadcrumb trails left by bigger players. Jyhad was a puzzle to which some pieces would always go missing… and thus, she'd decided not to worry herself sick about them. This was not a Domain where territories were secure and succession orders unquestioned. This was Los Angeles; takeover bids happened every night. "If that's true, they were probably in it together. You know what they say about coincidence."

Her next paper-flip was tellingly dry, and the disengagement might have put an end to all of this, if only Samantha could let dead dogs lie. "But the style was totally different. Someone _saw_ Harold shot – saw a bullet put in him right on the corner of Stanford and Fifth. Humans, too. Stop me if I'm wrong, here, but it doesn't sound like Tom had the same manner of death. _Death_… we don't even know if the second man's dead."

Annette's one-shot laugh was more of a cough. "Oh, he's dead, all right. I'll put money on that."

The claim was punctuated by one neat, succinct scrape – lead drawn through another line of their master's unfortunate word choices. No use hiding it… not for this editor, not for subordinates, not for loyal Childer. McByrd's censorship was brutal and did not hesitate. The phrase eliminated read PREEMPTIVE STRIKE; she replaced it with a boring, mundane, non-provocative DEFENSIVE MANEUVER.

Perhaps it was the rough slice of _No. 2_ tip; perhaps it was their careless conversation. Either way, something popped the alarm hatch behind Castillo's focused yellow gaze. She spread all ten fingers across her humble spot of tabletop and leant conspiratorially forward. There was a breath of deliberation. "Do you think… are they even connected?"

"I can't imagine they wouldn't be. Tom and…" She trailed.

"Harold. _Harold_."

Samantha was somewhat frustrated to find Annette had already returned to the realm of Sans Serif legalese and deaf ears. She rose from her cohort's workspace and walked aimlessly into the den, eventually picking its single chair. The springs creaked inside deep cushion when sat upon. Boot heels on the empty coffee table; misshapen newspaper stack; sinking into memory foam with a sidelong view of her forerunner's skinny back through slouched shirt fabric. Fingers hit keys and pages turned. Neither Ventrue spoke for some time.

"Maybe the politics of it are already over, then," Castillo pondered aloud, forfeiting the mess. She poked her brow with one thumb and did not bother with nice posture in this exhausted furniture. A tired, lengthy blink stole the two coins of her eyes from view. "Maybe this is the result and not the cause. I mean – it's possible, isn't it? Odd that we didn't hear anything earlier, but it wouldn't be the first time. Serena might've had cause to suspect them of something."

"Not likely you'd hear me guess at what Serena's thinking."

Samantha straightened. Suddenly, willfully – the conclusion one of them reached a long time ago, dropped in halfhearted hints and particular glances – revelation came. "I bet she killed them both."

Annette twisted around to hook an elbow over her chair back; beneath the slant of red brows and redder knots stabbed a frank, humoring, Cheshire grin. "Do you _think_?"

"Yes," the younger insisted. Her mouth was pursed into the firmness of a pinpoint. "I think I do."

McByrd's crooked, candid smile unfurled itself into an eye roll as she turned back to write with a sip of mug blood in one hand. It was a fairly good mood for her.

"I have to go in and drop off some documents tonight," the girl continued, nerves apparent, sucking in and biting her bottom lip. She was all jumpy energy, tensions from possibilities unchecked. Questions lit in a stare quickly alive. "Do you think this is something we ought to have heard about? This thing with Harold. I could ask, I suppose. I'm not sure how she'd take it."

"Asking is probably not a great idea. If Serena thinks you need to know, she'll tell you. Otherwise keeping your trap shut is the safest option. Look – I have to turn these over, too," Annette remarked of her paper piles. One sharp hand patted the incomplete binder; it was a determined, decisive _smack_. "Give me an hour to finish, and you can take me with you."

"Yes. OK," Samantha agreed, and you could've tasted the relief of her sudden exhale.

She finished.

They went.

**II**

The whitewashed house in Palos Verdes was nearly empty when Ms. McByrd and Ms. Castillo arrived.

You could hear shouting echoing from the office. Seneschal Woeburne's lobby was bare and clean, as were these hallways, as was her unlit upstairs… but the hollering could not be scrubbed off. It was a common thing to walk into from the dark of Los Angeles. Discontent visitors, political contentions and frigid vent air kept this place circulating on the most humid, unbearable nights. The iron fireplaces were desolate, the menacing tables unset, the guard shifts carefully rotated to minimize eavesdropping but maximize their physical presence from views outside this unforgiving abode.

And – of course – Mark Lindell was screaming at the top of his staid, serious, perpetually unhappy lungs.

"-had NO authority to make such a motion without consulting with us. This Board does not exist at your whim. I don't care what anyone else told you or gave you clearance to do. _We_ are not meant to be a judiciary for all LA. We have litigious responsibility to account for your actions on behalf of the clan and our assets in the city-"

He went on like this at Ms. Woeburne quite often; and just as often, she would withstand the admonishments with loosely crossed arms and a strange ghost of smile across her quietly irritated face.

"-refusal to recognize that your station and your identity saddle us with a degree of culpability for every one of your potential disasters, be they genuinely yours or your masters'," Mr. Lindell scalded, pacing rapidly to and fro across the hardwood of that federal dome. You could hear the risk of pitch cracks when his insults swung high. His soles tapped furiously, almost comically so, and he did not look directly at the much calmer woman looking evenly back. "If you fail to respect that, someone else will. Of course I reacted! I'll react to whatever I have to – whatever you neglect – to keep this advisory functioning, with or without you at its forefront. And you can't expect us to abide by _your_ planning when you choose not to share the details therein: preparations, operations and especially aftermath. Preparations. Operations. Aftermath. _Especially_ aftermath. I keep repeating these three things to you and it NEVER sticks."

Serena sat in one of 961's uncomfortable chamber chairs and watched him red-face through the far corners of her holly-green stare. From where both Childer had stopped inside this echoing foyer, they could see the strained notch between their Sire's shoulders – one stitch, beneath her wall of dark hair, as blades pressed into a dismal black suit.

Lindell had never been a man well-suited to yelling. The administrator was of lightweight, scrappy build – body long and mechanically sullen, limbs waspish, eyes a thin eucalyptus. His movements were awkwardly quick, all knees beneath pant legs that bagged. He wore button-downs beneath sports coats and he had a gullish thirty-five-year-old's face perfectly lined by short-chopped brunet. There was little visceral intimidation about their stickling chief Praetor, from the way his polished shoes clapped to the normalcy of his stress to the grimness of his ties; Mark's wound voice hit bluntly, tightly, yet not deeply enough to frighten the woman now sitting before him. There was very little muscle in the narrow aggression of his actions. A modern man, you could sometimes goad him into swearing, sometimes crassly, but there was no sense of immediate peril from people who penciled their rants into datebooks.

And nothing beyond verbal assaults would have gone very well for him.

One could rarely gauge the potency of dormant Disciplines (particularly insidious Ventrue ones), but even in an absolute throe, she certainly _appeared_ capable of overpowering him. And appearances still held great portent for disputed territories. Add this to the fact Ms. Woeburne was not a particularly large or impressive female – not generally one who looked fit to wrestle down anyone – and their imbalance was even less amiss to LA's nascent Board or its many laughing critics. They looked funnily alike for all their stark differences. They were bickering with one another on the same side of a courtroom more often than not.

"So don't dare complain to me that my response to your… insanity," he spat, only an exaggeration depending on whom you asked, "was 'unfortunate.' This whole fiasco is so far _beyond_ unfortunate. I acted at zero hour to control what I thought were rogue entities, and if you don't knock this chosen-child, shoot-from-the-hip-" Splutter. "-maverick bullshit off, I'm going to have to start seriously considering YOU are a rogue entity."

The threat was unfinished and almost unconsciously made. Praetor Lindell was not someone who plotted murder or sensational downfalls. His concerns were with organization functionality, upkeep and legalities; bitterly practical creatures such as he had little interest in the dramatics, shoe-polishing and personal vendettas so coded into Ventrue society. In a way, you sympathized with people like him… people whose eyes were ever-trained, always-impatient, forever-waylaid by the childish cruelties of byzantine monsters with older souls than his. It was more obsession than preoccupation. He needed to order this world into an oiled machine with replaceable parts.

"I think you're overreacting, Mark," Serena told him, a placating thing to say, but not necessarily unmeant. Her tone was even and contained by its waning accent. Her posture was strangely, cockily imperfect in the place a Baron had occupied only one night before. "With every respect, the situation is under control – was never out of it. We have all our bases covered. When I said it was unfortunate what happened to Mr. Embry, that wasn't a swat at you… it's simply unfortunate."

Samantha swatted at Annette then with a palm to her ribs. "That's Harold," she whispered, bold for making sounds in this otherwise deserted entryway. There wasn't a spot misplaced upon the long bare dining table. There wasn't a bead shivering on the overhead chandeliers. "Harold Embry. Do you think this is why…"

But Castillo suffocated her stray thought, russet springlets bobbing. The elder Childe bit back a reflexive hiss and unsnapped her trench.

They had not been noticed or cared about. Ms. Woeburne continued her blasé efforts to calm. "No one's to blame for this misfortune, or the miscommunication that preceded it – least of all the Board," or so its greatest advocate reassured. Of the relatively little done since their new Seneschal took office, this cabinet of clanmates was her crowning achievement, and likely the defining one. Sebastian LaCroix had not humored a committee of sage peers challenging his writs and diktats. They had spent many years being a starving, brittle afterthought. They were still overly careful now, but with central government's backing, sought to assert new influence over those who once ignored them. "Whenever one attempts an undertaking like this, she does so acknowledging the risk of casualty. But you should realize that nothing has changed; no fallout; no need for accountability, because we have discretion. I may not share every motion I make with the assembly, but I am _always_ discreet. You know that about me. I understand your position, but…"

"Obviously not! You're still making excuses, so you're not even close to my position, let alone understanding it. I don't know why this is so difficult to get a handle on. You can't do this." An intolerant snort halfway between scold and plea. Mark was not too terribly older than Seneschal Los Angeles, and perhaps the charges of her inadequacy made him insecure – both because his youth might otherwise have been in-question, and because her appeals for more bureaucracy largely propped him where he was. _Acting_-Praetor was the technical title; a Supervisor uplifted, a succession order frozen. Los Angeles was a young and deadly city. Its stagnation was a pit of tangled creepy-crawlers – not a ceasefire, and not a sign of better times. "You can't keep haring off when a handful of Primogen give you their half-baked idea of clearance."

"An Archon's clearance isn't what I'd call half-baked," Ms. Woeburne chuffed, aggravation edging in. He cut her off. Serena did not elbow for the floor, but leant further back, drilling two fingers into her right temple while sliding a dangerous heel forward. It was an irreverent and surprisingly personal stance.

They were not enemies. Oddly enough, her perceived toothlessness and Mr. Lindell's addiction to strict, unfrilled business made them partners against most of LA these nights. She had done much to enable him, a relative newcomer to the city, because Serena understood that kindling a Board was her best chance of court protection in a Domain where titles were disputed daily. He scowled and dictated to Ms. Woeburne while she nodded, dismissed, and postponed-for-later-consideration. Sometimes they argued spectacularly behind Mirada Lane's shut doors, but for all the harping and warnings brushed-off, neither had fired at the other yet. Bickering was normal mode of communication. It was a rare position for two Ventrue who had day-to-day animosity but no real reason to harm one another.

Being partners, however, did not demand being friends. Perhaps their micro-focus was too similar. Perhaps stunted Ms. Woeburne reflected his own shortcomings, and perhaps he reminded her of who she used to be. Mark Lindell had a textbook upbringing. He was not a martyr-maker or an interrupted sacrifice.

"You think the _rank_ Archon is a consolation to me? I still don't know exactly what happened in these past few evenings," the man seethed. He shoved both hands into his trouser pockets and turned to the Seneschal directly, towering high, yet daunting only in the vigor of his anger. Even in a face-off, this discontent Praetor still did not meet her eyes. He preferred to bore hellward; his brows, aggressive and straight, matched a straighter nose and a crooked parliament. He looked like an accountant. She was a snake consigliore. "I don't want to know now. You missed your opportunity to gain our support in this. I have only what you _say_ happened next to a draft of a public report you haven't even made, and I'm not sure which to believe less. But that's beside the issue at this point; I'm washing my hands of it. You deal with your Primogen and their crackbrained business in Hollywood alone. Claudia Fairholm is more than competent and she's _your_ weasel to wrangle now. I have to figure out some way to cogently explain to the rest of Board that Isaac Abrams just dropped through the crust of the earth."

McByrd's restlessness fell flat. She turned to Samantha with absolute frankness and a burnt brown stare. "That would be why."

Serena's tempered expression swelled into an off-center, self-confident grin as one neat sleeve propped upon the seat back. The gesture ran Annette's blood cold as she had performed that exact same flippant move only hours before. "It's not as though he went belly-up on my doorstep," the Seneschal remarked. Her stockings stretched beneath ankle straps. She was a neutral force save the thick, vicious scarlet across that thin Ventrue mouth. It was a color that promised the teeth within. "Are you even sure I had anything to do with this, at all?"

Mark glared. "On top of everything else, you say that. Don't be impertinent."

"I apologize," she said.

The other politician sighed. He tapped his chin with a prominent set of knuckles and blinked a migraine away. "Even if you are telling the absolute truth, a fantasy we BOTH know better than indulging, your handling of these things is usually antagonistic to mine. How could you expect I wouldn't jump at the shadow of a potential betrayal? I regret that your soldier died needlessly, but if you don't _inform_ me of anything, expect I'll meet what smells like sedition with gunfire. Or yet another misguided attempt to clean up a mess I can only assume you must've made."

"It's hardly a mess if I've kept it contained. Embry was a trigger-man; he was just following orders. Orders I had another person give him, and as I've said, I took care to make sure that person was not an issue long after." She did not fix her posture – did not leap back beneath these castigations and accusations of sloppiness – but hunkered forward, toes tidily together, elbows propped on thighs and hands folded beneath her boomerang jaw. Lindell did not flinch. "If you want to hand out dunce caps, plant one on Mr. Genovese; he served his purpose without a second thought and now he's no one's problem any longer. It reeks of sedition because I planned it that way. But the sedition is _his_ and not mine. It's a classic defection, a common story; there is security footage from my home to prove this. We've executed the guilty party with no other witnesses to contend with. And that's what I'll tell anyone who asks. And that's what I would have told Harold." There was a pointed, perilous pause to frame Samantha's mute, excited gasp. Serena Woeburne pushed her lips together. She looked annoyed. "Who was a very _good_ trigger-man, which is why I'm sorry to hear he's been 'cleaned up' by you."

"Don't start," Mark hissed. He thrust out a punitive finger. "Don't start with me now."

"You did what you thought you had to, I see that. It would have been better if you consulted with me _beforehand_, but now I'm parroting your argument to you, aren't I?" Who knew if the Seneschal's chagrin was wrapped up in a gullible assassin's death or the partial negation of her carefully-constructed scheme? You could occasionally catch Ms. Woeburne in a lie, but you were never sure when she was telling the complete version of truth.

"There was no time! I cashed in a favor to spare your idiotic seams from the-"

"As I said… you did what you thought you had to. But I can't say I'm pleased about it," she noted mildly. The placidness of her tone infuriated Lindell more than the Seneschal's point did. There was not a strand of grim espresso gone mislaid; it hung motionless along her spine, never crossing the barricade of shoulders, never curled or separated or anything but a dusky, austere sheen. "It's just wasteful, is all. Embry was an awfully talented shot."

"I don't care if he was a damned prodigy," Mark squawked. The profanity seemed to pique her interests, if not the taut attitude. Ms. Woeburne's brows hopped and fell. He fortunately missed it. "Staging sedition is not something I am going to praise you about – not if you have a fraction the role I suspect."

This time, there was a sighing, salty quality to her response. "You act like you never talked about this. I can count the times we discussed the cost-benefits of someone moving against Abrams-"

"TALKED. Not did," he snapped.

"Well, now someone has done. So by all means, let's cost-benefit away. It would really be helpful if, instead of bellowing at me, you and I sat down to brainstorm questions I'm sure Hollywood is going to…"

A sudden switchblade in the way he looked at her stomped the disrespect short.

"There was a call placed from your desk phone seventeen minutes before that bullet left its cartridge," Mark struck – his biggest stick, his exclamation mark, his mystery-buster. The man did not move from where he stood grounded furiously in 961's somber office to deliver this threat. It was a genuine inquiry and it was also a childish kick to sting her pride. "It wasn't to Strauss."

You could hear the clock ticking on the far wall. Annette, who was accustomed to seeing them embroiled in obscenities and personal attacks, now seriously considered about-facing and walking out the parlor door. Lindell's nostrils flared.

"Whose games- in what _world_- whose cock do you think's left to ride at this point, Seneschal?"

Sebastian LaCroix's Childe leant even further forward – until her stare turned from annoyed to two neat, knifed threats. "_None_ of your business."

"_We should go,"_ Samantha mouthed, and in a rare moment, Ms. McByrd thought she had a good idea. Seneschal LA's redheaded delegate pulled a manila envelope from her companion's clenched hands and made to set them both in an unlabeled stack upon Serena's oversized reception table. It was large enough to house the full Los Angeles Board but she had never seen anyone actually dare to sit at it. Leaving documents here on the varnish required courage a speaker's first Childe fortunately had.

Delivery made, Annette had meant to leave – to vacate, wordlessly, and let Samantha drive her home before tonight's second rainstorm matured from encroaching scents to droplets. When she pivoted, however, towards the doorway and her associate, Ms. Woeburne had stood up. The two urbane forms through that open office door may or may not have noticed their audience; it probably would not have fazed Serena, but Mr. Lindell was never pleased about unexpected occurrences. Anything that rumpled his schedules was unwelcome. Anything that delayed or rerouted the carriage of business was an inconvenience, a misstep, a social foul.

By this measure, Seneschal LA had committed highway robbery with social fouls. She'd pushed the chair out of her way and was now switching to sit at that portentous, bullying black desk.

"When we're talking about a gambit that might drag half a cabinet down with you, everything is my business. This is your _clan_. Dig up some loyalty for it. In the meantime, you should just be counting yourself lucky Abrams has been such a thorn in our sides," the male grumbled. He fought with his shirt neck furiously for a moment. It lost a tiny button in his hand. "And that I – _again_ – went out of my way to cover your back."

Ms. Woeburne flashed him that same nervous grin that never quite left. She made her trademark expression appreciate and slap all at the same time. "Well! It's a good thing I have you."

The Praetor looked icily at her with his hands on his hips.

Serena spotted them.

Around the willow silhouette of Mark Lindell, verpine eyes forked askance – suddenly, decisively – puncturing McByrd's over the negative space between desktop and door. The Childe froze. She felt every thatch of her vertebrae lock. Their Board manager was still scolding, still complaining about grievances and stumbling blocks, harsh words that passed ineffectively through Seneschal LA's ears. Her Sire said nothing. The leftmost corner of Ms. Woeburne's portentously red mouth twitched.

She snuck Annette a miniscule smile.

"I think I've got your point," the woman said, and rose again, a finality of motion to her bearing Ms. McByrd thoughtlessly stepped backwards as Serena approached the Praetor, steering him out with the proximity of her body and the direction in which it moved. She glanced at his choleric face sidelong as they walked towards the door, footsteps on expensive wood. "When this statement goes out to the public, you'll have an advance copy. Until then – because I know I'm keeping you from something else – we might as well call it a night."

Annette pulled Samantha into an invisible, irrelevant corner of the main room. They exchanged apprehensive glances as both Kindred – official, solemn, obvious – strode out and towards the manor exit. The Childer stood arm-in-arm. You could choke on Ms. Castillo's summer pear perfume. Her senior wore none.

"I appreciate your concern, Mark," Ms. Woeburne said, a modest stand-in for _goodbye_.

Lindell took no note of servants, genteel settings or excuses heard a hundred times before. He scowled down homeowner and home threshold. His arched brow could've caught on the lights overhead. "Oh, is THAT what you think this is?"

They looked flatly at one another as a parting; Los Angeles's Praetor mumbled some tetchy, unintelligible thing to her; and he promptly, petulantly, departed. His agitated pace crunched the gravel walk. His drab grey car pulled abruptly, grumpily, off hosed asphalt and sulked away from the dimly glowing house on Mirada Lane that seemed to bow farewell behind it.

"_The House"_ – that's what Annette and Samantha called it, an ironic bit of domestic, the hub two young Ventrue's lives circled around.

Serena faced them from where she'd been left across the vacant foyer and smiled.

"Hello," their Sire welcomed, unpretentious friendliness, an expectation met and a family tree well-watered.

Ms. Woeburne's eyelids crinkled cheerfully as she clacked towards them. Her momentum, too, was brisk – but the relaxed tone, the stiff-upper-lip shine, and the slight, familiar discomfort always present upon her face wove an allied flag. "Sorry if you were waiting out here for very long; someone watching the carport should've come to notify me." (Someone like Tom Genovese.) "I did have to deal with that, however. You know how our Praetor can be. Here," she offered happily, and reached out to take her youngest's jacket, currently hugged between Ms. Castillo's breast and forearm like a leather security blanket. Samantha was wise to give it up. As though nothing suspicious passed – and indeed, interrupting Lindell's tirades had become a routine thing – Serena strode quickly to the doorside coat closet and hung it up.

Annette kept wearing hers, and the Seneschal did not ask. Both stippled hands tightened then released at either trench pocket. They were unexpectedly fragile for a personality that dressed itself like man-eating basalt. They did not give away the unattractive outfit hidden within. "Don't worry about it; it's not important. It's not as important, anyway. It's just that she and I both finished some business tonight and figured we'd come together, save you a meeting."

"Oh. That's very considerate of you," Ms. Woeburne thanked. "Would you like to talk it over in the office?"

"You're busy," Samantha noticed, a bashful, flattering refusal that looked more like an admiring mentee than a worried spy. Annette was momentarily jealous of the innocuous way her sister showed fear.

Serena's earlier pleasantness flicked into an actual grin. She was a little taller than Castillo; it wasn't much. She was a little prettier than McByrd; still not enough to jar. Their warden was femininity made of tin that began to sting, peel and spark when it tried to grow too warm. "You're not wrong there."

And before they could leave – to advantage this pause and their master's cramped agenda – Seneschal Los Angeles laid a hand upon the caramel girl's arm. "Exactly how much of that did you hear?" she wondered, softly, fingers light enough to terrify. Those digits rested coldly though the thin cashmere sleeve of her demon daughter's uncovered blouse. The bow that held its high neck together shivered. It was gallingly babyish and a weak, watery pink.

Samantha's eyes paled until you could see every pigment of liner beneath them. Annette knew she needed saving, and cut in.

"Not much. We just stepped in a few minutes ago," McByrd countered sans a single skip, a solitary buzz in her dead and sluggish pulse. The woman's composure was remarkable. She'd scribbled transcripts away in meeting halls with thundering Primogen and California's most belligerent bloodsuckers without speaking, without cringing, without losing this enviable cool. Her littermate's poise was not as impressive. The neonate's digits tangled together where that irksome, girlish shirt tucked into the waistband of her pants. "She and I have separate reports to give you. Here's the full stack."

Ms. Woeburne took them from her descendent, who knew enough to downplay politics, but not enough to present items to officers with the respect of both hands. They were mussed from landing on the table. The Seneschal jostled them back into place herself. "Not much?"

Annette shook her head. "No. Almost none."

"Some," Samantha mumbled, gaze contritely on the floor.

Serena smiled one more time.

"Good," she supposed. "Then I'll have less to explain when I ask you this favor."

On their Sire's urging, they did venture deeper into the well-loved, dangerous House.


	4. The Brigadier Game

**The Brigadier Game **

Ms. Woeburne's call was interrupted when the Brujah stormed in and slapped hands-flat on her flawless desk.

"There is a door knocker," she noted, but knew – as she knew about most things Christina Kallas did – the infraction was only half-planned. There was a briar bush of hatreds and moderation tangled up in the woman who stood beneath all this excellent mahogany now: jutting shoulder blades, juvenile intimidation, varsity league. Her posture was gamey and hunting. It might have been striking to a child of redder blood than Ventrue stock. Mountain curs, however, had little business bearing fang at Dobermans. This growl was meant to be lost; neither one of them thought seriously of those powerful knuckles, heroic face, and the bristle that razored a Den Mother's back.

They looked at one another pausing for defeat. Anger had jostled the assurance of bargains swimming beneath the Brujah's black head of hair; it was a smoky, piping flint. Fine lines, fury lines, broiled those wide myrtle eyes. Her lip twitched. A vein was pulsing bright, riotous blue along the inside of one tall, lean arm. The Seneschal blinked at that elbow and lifted her own sharp, adamant, portentous chin.

As usual in Los Angeles, in Free-State tragedy and in blueblood boards, the sitting dog is bigger than the one who feels a need to bark.

Serena was about to ask for breathing room when the offending palms pulled away, only to be bashed – the both of them – back down again. Her glass lamp rattled on the onyx enamel. There was a pad to protect it from ink spills and prints.

"Claudia Fairholm?" Christie demanded, face made wilder by the long disaster of oiled mane. The Ventrue glanced frankly up through a mossier, unimpressed green. Her own mane was a stauncher, weaker-water shade and terribly, unnaturally sleek. The Seneschal's coolness made bland features look older than they were. There was an odd dim swing as the overhead chandelier disrupted Nine-Sixty-One's synthetic chill. "Claudia fucking Fairholm? REALLY?"

Ms. Woeburne daintily, _knowingly_, cleared her throat. "You have an opinion."

"For fuck's sake; you're god damned right I do." So much force, so much gusto pushed breakneck into being. Her posturing was of genuine passions but creaky foundations. The Brujah – as a clan, and in reference to the individual before her – made disheveled a noble state of being. "We need to talk. We need to talk NOW."

"It doesn't seem like I have a choice," Ms. Woeburne noticed. At this angle, none of the tough, vinegar light on Christie's back could bleach her host's cosmetics. The former was a headlong, smoking, bantam shield. Meanwhile, there was cleanly dark around the latter's pale jaw, soft cheek. Her aggressor's were chipped from harder stone, but neither would question the balance here. It had been established a dozen times. It was a cruel duet for an impossible march, a desperate marcher, and a shallow, logical, patient justice of the peace. _Interminable patience_. If there was ever a seat for endurance trial, Serena sat there now.

"Give me a moment," Seneschal LA acquiesced, patience interminable, a little amused as she picked up and punched fingers into her desktop phone. "I'll cancel my next appointment."

Do not mistake confidence for carelessness; Ms. Woeburne recognizes, perhaps better than most, that a declawed beast can still be dangerous. She pokes no fun at what purpose Christina Kallas serves. But there is nothing admirable to be said of a hobbled Anarch nation as its last continent deteriorates – save that its survivors are few, scattered, spurned, and they are hazardous only for the other creatures their dying knells might wake. They can muster no counter-siege and scrape no lasting State together from the bloodwet bones of their own collapse. They are finished here but for an inconvenient echo, a raucous leftover, and the leader that emerged from it – one who does not lead so much as bluster and plead her case.

There is nothing wrong, however, with being prepared. Preparedness is the backup plan of those who've earned, not inherited. It is Serena Woeburne's principle– and it has, when other things (or simply _others_) have not, saved what remains of her life.

So a crude arrangement stands… as does the Brujah on a trim crimson circle of rug.

When the telephone clicked done, calls made and schedules changed, Christie was still making a fuss of being outraged. She'd retreated only a few steps, just enough to let a Seneschal take in the virulence of her brooding. Youth and righteousness are vain acts. Threat theatrics have never worked among Ventrue, and even in a clan known for brute force and passion, are wearing cripplingly thin. This Den Mother's heat is a stunted fire, and no one knows it better than the woman who wrote their current truce out. Perhaps this is what Ms. Woeburne meant to remind her guest – when she blinked, crinkled a polite smile, and tossed cordiality that cuts.

"You know," the Ventrue remarked, setting straight her office placemat, rearranging pens. It was almost as though she'd made conversation – candidness that might be friendly – were it not from such a bitter, duplicitous, _patient_ bitch. "When you storm in like that, you almost remind me of your forerunner."

Credit where it's due; Christie balked, but barely. She gave no quarter to shallow insults or the not-so-veiled hazard perched in that leather-lined chair. The sting of being a shortcoming is only one grimace along two unpainted slopes of her large, gallant frown.

"I don't care what I do or don't remind you of," so swore the Brujah, marble and mighty, because she was muted and meek. "All I care about is what the hell's going on in this city. You told me Hollywood was a done deal. You gave me a guarantee; that's what you called it. And I actually _left_ here – I can't believe I left this fucking office – thinking that's how things were going to pan out. Thinking that I would get up soon," she spat; drama, encore; always uproars and always lectures from revolutions that had no soapboxes strong enough to protest upon. "To find that district in a better way. A way that protects my people from the Toreador. That's what you said to me last month."

The officer had nothing illuminating to add; she placed her hands on the desk, and loosely folded them.

"Mutual assurances," Christie added, because there was no choice under the expectance of a Ventrue but to move forward, _add more_. "This whole thing was supposed to be about mutual assurance, so when you mentioned Hollywood, I took your word for it. Then you elect some worthless trash like Claudia Fairholm—" Often had a beautiful name been seethed with so much distaste in California. "Explain to me HOW this assures anything for us?"

Better to have cooperative baggage than a problematic rival, no matter how mediocre, no matter how dull in the tooth. Ms. Woeburne exhaled deeply, coughed once, and straightened her spine as she lost her smile.

"You might ask that question of Mr. Shih," the Ventrue suggested, readjusting in that lofty, authoritarian seat. Squeaking wheels did not squeal on its occupant. She was nervous, awkward, and discomfort bubbled even beneath the veneer of civility so common to Ms. Woeburne's face. Both she and Kallas loitered together for that last _tick_ before the kaboom.

"I'm not bringing him into this. I don't care what a Toreador thinks, and you shouldn't, either." She was in impressive form this evening; her quills challenging, scapulae strong. But in compacts such as the one between Seneschal Los Angeles and Christina Kallas, volume says more than body or language. Only the loser needs be so terribly, so defiantly, so constantly loud. "All that matters is what we agreed-"

"What we agreed is that I would seek consult, and I've done that. I've _rigorously_ done it. I've touched no interests in your territories – not without thinking about that agreement first. And believe me, I'm thinking about it constantly these nights." The reference disturbed – intimidated – but with none of the dressings typical of intimidation. Her look _leant_. It was common of Woeburne to talk about contracts while mentioning crimes – recent shootings, uproars spilled over, a week-old race-killing done to a company neonate by an Anarch combatant that used words like _Den Mother_ and _State_. Christie had nothing to do with that murder. Failure to stop it might have hurt their threadbare relationship worse than backstabbing or ineptitude.

"I'm doing everything I can. I am bending over backwards to keep them—" Another interruption, because though Serena was patient, she was not about to grin through more of _that_.

"The thing about agreements, Christie, is that they've got conditions. I would seek consult. And you would honor the decisions I have to – key: have to – make. Well, as you see, I've fulfilled my end. And I was given Hollywood's blessing. I'm sorry" – though she probably wasn't – "that you disapprove, but that's just the way it turned tonight. And anyway, I stand by my decision." These were royalist dictations from a Seneschal who sat primly in her second-rate chair that no one mistook for a throne. That red stick was too bright, and too dry. "All the candidates were reviewed and assessed as they always are. So I made a selection. Fairholm was – is – a sound choice to appease some unpleasant people, mine and yours."

The Brujah's hand, not entirely sure what it was doing, flung upwards in a claw of exasperation. She gnarred, stiffened. But, despite the blunt cruelty of those nails, each finger had flattened out before they turned intimidating; it was a signal of irritation, not hostility, and not anything that might alter the small box of her court. Anarchs played an unsatisfying racquetball these nights. They hit at walls, diverted anger, because their Den Mother knew better than to let them lash at Ventrue suits.

"And you believed Nicky Shih?" Christie guffawed, claw regressing back to a palm and smacking blandly at the woman's long-boned face. She groaned into it, muffled obscenities behind a too-thin, too-fleshy hedge. Serena could sympathize with the look of frustration. She would not sympathize with a partner who did not succeed. "Nicky Shih is a fucking louse! Everyone to tie this rope with, and you people pick…? I'm not going to put up with midway politics," or so the vampire grandly spat. Ms. Woeburne let her finish. "I thought we had an understanding. You said you'd honor that understanding, so help me comprehend how propping Fairholm's big ass up in LA is acceptable or shrewd, or you better figure out something else fas-"

The Seneschal stopped up the rant like a thumb in the bottle.

"You're very pretty," she decided, mild scrutiny, Ventrue compliments you could never decipher between a condescension and a lie. Christie stared with furious mouth done slightly unhinged, brows in a knot, confusion swelling sour, unsaid things gouging inside the notches of her neck. Standing on that office floor, a round of carpet floating over hardwood, she was not a fraction of her influence or her size. "For an Anarch. As least, I think so."

"What," the Den Mother wanted to know.

"Oh, that's it. There's nothing more," Serena clarified, too offhand, too much herself. She picked up and armed a big red pen. There was blank notebook paper stored, always, in a small top drawer. There were single pearls pinned in each ear. "Not relevant, really. It's just I've always wanted to tell you. Foolish of me, pointing it out; I mean to say, it's not an accident. Surely you already know."

There was a moment of silence, of insecurity. The Brujah wanted to be livid, but her bewilderment – the disorientation of pleasantry – made it ambiguous. No one likes being mocked. She wanted to shout; she wanted to win.

Kallas scowled bravely, but carefully, in the direction of that menacing desk. Her enunciation was unnaturally good. "What in the hell makes you think I'm interested in your flattery?"

Then: "_What_," she ruffed again, aftermath of a Ventrue's smirk.

The Seneschal had shown a secret. "Nothing."

Nothing might have been a better answer – you risk poison when prying a snake's smile – but left everything unresolved. Christie did not do "unresolved." Christie was not stupid. If she was being demeaned, she would know about it, even if there was no repose but to rattle the chinks in her cardboard chains.

There was a while of glaring, of crossed arms and private amusements, before this snake's tongue flicked and the venom slithered out.

Woeburne met her eye.

"Do you also know," she asked, ink between pointers, names unneeded, politeness with a saber edge. "How very much you sound like him?"

Car treads rolling outside. The shutting of an upstairs door.

"But you're not him, are you?" Her voice was gently, understandingly, softly sinister.

There was no need to dig. There was no need to reconjure a nickname, describe a face, to affix _like the man I killed before you_. These kinds of threats were the clearest and cruelest. Christie said nothing. She let that ember simmer out, and gulped the sword in her throat.

"Maybe we should move back to business," Serena suggested, genial as possible, not minding how the demoralized young Brujah bored gutted at her boot toes. The pen sat neatly between cardstock and cold hands. "There's a great deal of work that needs to be done tonight, and no small hunk of it by me. Mr. Shih and I take full accountability for the management shifts. And, whatever you may think of her personally, Claudia Fairholm will not move to dislodge your interests. She has working knowledge – and appreciation – of what a tricky role you've had to play for everyone here."

"You didn't tell the Toreador about this…"

"No, no." Woeburne was swift to reassure the Den Mother, who'd glanced up at that statement, too frightened to hang her head any longer. "I put that poorly. I'm sorry. What I mean is that Ms. Fairholm is privy to how quick the Kuei-Jin are to anger, and how sensitive our relations with them have become. You'd have to be an idiot or a tourist not to be. And so she realizes that, in the interest of keeping the peace, we can't afford a warlike Free-State. Your headship is a far better alternative to any of your brethren. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows they'd be far less sane if left to themselves."

For all the unease in this sanitary, hollow room, lined with books and sobriety and lucrative shades, there was truth in what Serena said. They could not abide revolutions in Los Angeles any longer. In a tenuous time where one Cainite's actions could prod the dozing Cathayan bull – for devils hardly drew distinctions among demons – stray shots were not acceptable. About this, the Seneschal was terse and candid. She did not desire internal combat when there were few enough troops to spare – for though their numbers were dwindling these nights, Anachs hate viciously, and sorely do their punches sting – but far worse to battle Kuei-Jin when those same Anarchs would not fight for you.

Ms. Woeburne understood the implausibility of Free-State ranks ever marching alongside Camarilla operatives. She did not wave treaties or trumpet alliances. But she did, strictly and sincerely, vest her confidence in Christina Kallas – a woman who had lived through the purge of San Francisco; who had forced her rising voice above the others; and whose disgust for Sebastian LaCroix's holdover Childe had waned to distaste over a series of powwows, leniency, and tangible aid exchanged.

Perhaps they could empathize with one another. Perhaps it was merely a ceasefire of convenience and need. Serena no longer had the energy to mind which _perhaps_ rang truer so long as the cruor didn't pour. And in the wreckage of a Barony lost, a State suffocating, a maturity beyond her fifty-six years lived, Christie had hindsight to accept their "forerunner" – as Ms. Woeburne vaguely called him – was never the saint he'd claimed to be.

Then again, neither was she. Christina Kallas was a Den Mother who took a Seneschal's funds and a Seneschal's advice. If her people suspected this, they made no issue of it, but if it was ever confirmed…

The best that could be guessed is Los Angeles would be leaderless again. Dens would raze her respect, sledgehammer her title, make her shared blood spill; they would drag their own young veteran through a Gauntlet, knuckles and knives, where groping hands would tear the head from her body and throw it far.

She peeled coat hide from her neckline, listened to the Ventrue talk.

"I know you realize the risks," Serena reiterated, something each insisted to the other many times throughout these past few years of concord. The Anarchs loathed her. Dying frontlines will think what they wish, say what they feel; Christie knows from the way Ms. Woeburne speaks and worries that administration change is a chance LA can't afford to waste because of ancient odium and internal politics. This Non-Prince could be approached and appealed to. Her friendship was of the reserved kind and her clothes were all grey, white, black. "And I know you recognize what my main interests are. So I'm not asking you to make your party approve of Claudia Fairholm; I don't expect they'd like anyone I put forward for that site All I'm asking is tolerance. For our sake and yours, please, _please_ keep them quiet."

The Free-State will never be what it was – not in her lifetime. It has not been glorious for a very long time. But when a Ventrue wants to cooperate, when she needs your help and asks for it… there is reason, at least, to hope. Christina Kallas does it nightly – gritty, untrumpeted, stormy hopes. They are pedestrian and unpopular, but she hopes them, nonetheless. She works those realist thoughts and losing-side conservatism in the assumption that, with shows of temperance and a Seneschal's assistance, some of them might paddle above water. Not all. Not even most. But maybe some of them – beaten Brujah; warriors tired out; survivors like her, limping from the outskirts of Kuei-Jin San Francisco – might regroup, reintegrate, make it through this phasing-out alive.

She knew a lot of people who had. And she knew a lot of people – smarter people, bigger people, people with more loyalists and slicker plans and a fiercer hue of eye than hers – who hadn't.

She is not them.

"I'm trying to do that, but Primogen fucking around with Hollywood is not making it easy," the Den Mother contested, her ferocity more stress than real rage, her voice more itself now with all that machismo cooked, all the swaggering popped. There is too much air conditioning in here. The tank top beneath Christie's studded jacket is thick brown cotton, a warm color, but it can't keep baby hairs from tickling beneath. Serena Woeburne's clavicle is a frightening pale between steep blazer lapels. You can see blue lines over the bones.

That is the only vein of Sebastian LaCroix in Los Angeles these nights. It is dangerously easy to forget.

In the interest of respite and survival, Christie tries not to remember who her benefactor's maker is; if forbearance ends up costing her a skull, so be it. "I almost had a riot on my hands when she went public last night. I'm not kidding you about it and I'm not exaggerating. I was THIS close -" She pantomimed with pinched fingers, her hands made of blue paint and birthmarked joints. "-from being knocked on my face. I can't work like that, Woeburne. You're asking me one thing and telling me another. And let's not even talk about what your people do." They've done things – one like Toreador replacements and Seneschals who speak like divorce lawyers – that leave a Den Mother placating, back-tracking, _what-I-really-meant_-ing. They are things that make Kallas calm an audience that came with fists folded, scream half-truths at criticisms she doesn't think are wrong, and spark nightmares of executions in truck yards after midnight.

"I can't work like that," Christie repeated, a mantra she had to own. "And I don't have anything to explain to them when Camarilla councilors are moving into old territories."

Serena snorted a laugh at this, a note of incredulity, a small how-dare-they. "Old territories!" she cried, brows high behind black enamel. "Your people _hated_ Abrams. And they were happy to do so – right up until our administrators arrived."

"Claudia Fairholm isn't much of a trade. I'm doing what I can with what I've got. But don't act like you did us, or me, a favor."

Ms. Woeburne did not like the couched dismissal. Perhaps a sock-puppet speaker had heard too many of them in her brief tenure as stalling majordomo. "Our arrangement," she returned, voice sterner, accent pricking vowels up high. The word was overprounced enough to spank. A fleck of hoarfrost benumbed her stare. "Was that I live-and-let-live, and you convince your party to contain their excesses in my precincts. That was the relationship we agreed upon. That is the relationship I rely upon in my communications with Chinatown. If you can't keep them under control, I will find someone who can."

This time there really was a warning. They let it steam out in the hygienic estate air.

In the first days of this – when Christie just began to realize what "Den Mother" meant in the viper's pit of downtown LA – it all made her very sick. You might roll your eyes at that. Anarchs thrive off sickness, or don't they swear so?: politics, corporates, welfare, pedigrees, bombings cults, lawmen, your money and what you do with it _makes me sick. _Brujah say this all the time, and mostly, they mean it. That ubiquitous anger runs hot coal through your arteries. But when Christina Kallas says Los Angeles made her sick, she means it in a more intimate, more infectious sense. Long days were spent with peeled eyelids and throbbing in her brain. Nights brought stomach pains that did not feel like hunger. Sometimes she would just shut herself in a bulbless apartment somewhere and scream and kick and hit until there was no more furniture to smash. Others were full of noxious quiet that precedes death. She would grab at all her charcoal hair and pull handfuls out, scratch blood in her scalp, caught between blaming tensions or a body falling apart.

So when, still feeling like a liquidless corpse beneath locks that grew back, a Seneschal invites you in after one of her stupid, preening assemblies – company who's-who pageants you make yourself attend since nobody else does – and pays attention, you might, too. When she tells you _please sit_, and _are you comfortable_ while proposing mutual pacts, you don't immediately launch up and thunder out shouting _blasphemy! treason! heresy!_ Even though you know her manners are old-fashioned and her friendliness flounders, you give a few minutes; maybe for curiosity, maybe for the moment of peace. Maybe, when she murmurs the _graveness of things_; when she promises support; when she acknowledges a golden son's wrongdoings and that you aren't to be blamed for this shithole of city, and when she says with no curl of smirk _I think we can help each other_, your belief in that statement should be understood.

Christie didn't come to seize this job – never planned it out, she swears. She came looking for Jack and to fight if they Called her – found nothing, no warfare, and deserters already running. Something bad is going to happen here. They aren't sure what: Camarilla neutering, Kuei-Jin genocide, Tremere king-games. But they can feel _bad_ coming as all these jackals fight over the kill, and none pledge allegiance in a city with no Baron – and no Prince.

She didn't come here for the sake of a job. She did not exploit. Christie landed feet-first in Den Mother because there was nobody else to do it; and yes, this is a song others have sung with more or less earnestness. You can make whatever guess about hers you care to. She isn't sure she gives a fuck anymore.

What's sure is this: every time there is nobody else the _somebody_ gets smaller.

Christina Kallas is a strawpaper rebel. Serena Woeburne is an unfunny joke. They are trying to subsist.

"Isaac," Christie growled, aggression under her breath, a deadly period point. It carried more potence than Rabble language revealed. "Did you kill him?"

Red lipstick frowned. The Ventrue flipped her neat, trimmed hand. "Don't be ridiculous."

And so the Brujah sat finally, slouched heavy, in that same empty visitor's chair Woeburne always offered. It made a sad _creak-thump_. Neither spoke as she willed the muscles to settle, her hamstrings to adjust.

"Are you all right?" Serena asked, an honest tone, one real crease of concern between bold furrowed eyebrows.

Christie pressed a palm heel to her forehead, letting the pain wrinkle up. There was a scrape as the Seneschal stood, shoes tapping burnished wood, delicate steps in comparison to these ratty army boots. Everything was sore. Her throat felt scratchy and male. "Yeah."

"I will give you more properties. Will that help?"

"It couldn't hurt."

"Then we will make it happen. I'll have someone take care of the zoning." The Ventrue had poised directly in front of her guest by then – polished toes, pressed slacks, a whiff of trouble taken. It was close darkness. You just couldn't explain how they made a space _colder_.

"Christie?"

The Den Mother glanced lethargically up from her slump.

"I want you to succeed," Ms. Woeburne stressed, spoken like a comrade, as though she really meant it. And if her brow stitched in that almost-honest way, maybe it was truth enough for now. Her name sounded so crisp and so childish between those small white teeth. "I want to help you get what you need to make this work. But I _have_ to have you keeping up in every step. Do you understand?" Her fretful expression was undermined by the allowance of failure, by unseen witches, and old armistices that weren't publically discussed any more.

Christie nodded. She is not a particularly smart woman, but _yes_ is too often the smartest thing. "Just do whatever you were going to do. I'll… come up with something about Fairholm."

"Good," Serena sighed, not hiding her gust of relief.

They remained there like that for a short while – until the Brujah shook off her stupor, and until the Ventrue began itching beneath expensive sleeves for all this time lost. It is just as well these meetings never last long. Christina Kallas does not enjoy the company of reptiles, but has nowhere as quiet as the pristine danger of Mirada Lane. She is not a whimperer or sickly creature – she is one of Smiling Jack's, or was once; is a soldier; is a chest with a heart closer to Troile than most these nights – but the savage scents outside overwhelm. Gunsmoke, barracuda bone, sand mold and citrus fruit. So much time, and sifting back to those streets still makes her ill.

"I expect you to have something for me about this Hollywood disaster before the week's out," the Den Mother tried, pointlessly, as bluster forced its way back through. She hefted up with a motion that did not feel as large as it looked. Ms. Woeburne deftly stepped out of her way. "I said I'd pave it over. But I can't part the fucking sea."

"I appreciate that. You'll have more information, and likely a new building, by Thursday." Promises easy as scribbling checks. Christie pawed at the back of her neck in a ghost outline of office double-doors.

"Yeah, OK. OK. That's…" If nothing else: the way it was going to be. The foyer beyond these solid oak panels barely moved. Fingers hanging off doorknock brass, the Den Mother listened for anything that might drown out what raged towards that not-so-far throng of gnarled lights, but silence never lasts, and no spotless room could mend Angeltown. It was so much easier to fight the single shark in here. It was embarrassingly difficult not to lean forward, a question of inches, and touch her forehead to that cool wooden frame.

She had no word to describe what this place was and wasn't. She just said "OK," and in one half-turn of her wrist, opened. Woeburne watched with hands clasped cutely in the frigid hoops of her house.

"Christie?"

God.

"Try not to panic. It's going to turn out all right," the Ventrue said. There was no sense or flame burning to argue. Christie swallowed and walked through the heavy doors.

Ms. Woeburne shut them behind her and returned to the block of a dead man's desk. She did not finish working for a rather long time.

* * *

_**Author's Note**_**: Yak Yak Yak. Somebody please shoot someone again already.**

**I wish I could say my schedule is free as a bird and promise amazing update speed from here on out, but the sad facts are: 1. I can't. 2. I suck. 3. I'm sorry.**


	5. Ricochet Court

**Ricochet Court **

On any shark night downtown, there are some things to be counted upon. There is the spectrality of the wine-red reading room Maximillian sits in, there was the old-yellow texture of vellum beneath his finger that evening, and there will always be a matter at hand.

Tonight that matter came, twelve minutes before expected, as the pepper of polite – but insistent – knuckles on his parlor door.

"Strauss," said a known, tense voice. Those knocking hands did not try the lock. "Strauss, I'm early. Are you there?"

The Archon resettled copper-wire glasses across his thick, eaglelike nose. "Yes, Ms. Woeburne. Come in."

She did. The Ventrue entered that Victorian chamber with practice that smoothed her temerity, shoes that kept both feet sharp. There were politics on her mind, Strauss could see – politics bubbling surely as the rasp of heels on carpet, purposeful as the taut set of that fine jaw. None of these precious policies went voiced, however. They knew from many visits done together that other business must come first. Maximillian had been a Primogen before he'd been a lawman, and a Regent before that; with age like his came a special sort of propriety not often enough understood by Princes or their pets. In central Los Angeles these nights, amongst young monsters and poison crowns, first comes the politics of good fellowship – cordiality, rapport, that was so important between a patron and child.

"Hello, Max. I'm sorry for jumping the gun again," the woman apologized, stepping through their Chantry threshold below a heavy Grecian sun dial. Its cracks and caricatures flattened greening bronze against the crimson paper of his walls. One black folder, tucked beneath one black sleeve, was deposited on cherrybark end table she always used for new documents. Strauss never read in front of company. Serena had learned that about him, much as he had learned her preferences in refreshments, for hard handshakes, and professional friendliness that felt, at its farthest corners, fatherly. "One of my other appointments had to be cancelled, so I came over directly."

"Not at all. Be at home and help yourself to the pitcher, if you'd like. I was just indulging myself in a little mythos." He gestured to the iced carafe with book dust still darkening those large, lily-blue knuckles.

Ms. Woeburne stopped sturdily, calmly, before him. The cut of metropolitan monochrome that normalized politicians was poor camouflage in this place; blazer buttons and spruce conformity stood sharp amidst the odd plush of magic. Her long hair was pulled into a tail of grim, ascetic brown. Her face was washed and clear-eyed.

These were all standard commodities in a Camarilla city: sanitation, sobriety, a sense of stout plainness about things. Yet as many times as she walked into this townhouse, answering his calls or making her own, the Seneschal did not fit it. Those edges were too pure proof and rigid. They would not blend or dilute in a warlock's soft, rich lodgings, and there was always a hum of discomfort clacking through her. It was the tingle of something inexplicable, something unjustifiably weird. You were better off not asking about such things. There were certain knowledges meant only for a stranger people, and certain secrets kept solely by a lion-voiced, patriarchal, massive man in red.

"Thank you," she told him. In the interest of being grateful, Ms. Woeburne made a stiff, not entirely graceful reach for that silver pitcher sitting between them on his desk lip. The great maple writing table at which Maximillian did his studies could not properly be dubbed "desk," perhaps; its woodgrain was beachy, smooth-sanded gold but very lived upon. Beeswax smelling of rosemary repaired the notches of countless years and countless quills. Ink bottles, for his muses were a bit old-fashioned, had dribbled visibly. There were wet rings-over-rings from the blood he drank, and tonight's was already leaving its own damp stain. If it bothered her, Serena said nothing of this right-brain messiness, of the comforts he enjoyed. She navigated the stacks of many-colored parchment with the deftness of a decent diplomat, pushed a small smile, and took the handle up. Condensation made her fingers wet. He handed her a clean glass from the shelves behind him, a fleck of mundaneness amongst voodoo curios and questionable bindings.

"Of course," Strauss returned, not bothering to move his books away. There was dangerously little free space amongst notebook piles and candlestick matches. His bass was genteel, and rolled like distant thunder. "It gladdens me to see you again so promptly. I hope your night has gone well thus far."

Serena poured neatly, replaced the pitcher, and sat in the nearest loveseat. What a stark combination: swart suit, strawberry plush, gray marble fireplace sleeping behind her master's workspot. She wore slacks, but scooped an arm under herself as though to straighten a skirt. "On schedule, if nothing else. And yours?"

"It has been sluggish, but I am quite contented to say so. I believe you are only the second consult I've had today."

Pleasantry with a purpose. Young Ventrue are all stopwatches and timetables, but Tremere comprehend the value of rituality, and the strength of a few kind words exchanged.

Even with its tingle of mysticism – and with the paint clash of scarlet and spearmint in the hallways outside – it is a soothing venue, their refuge downtown. There is a faint scent of cooked mango and hot coal, of vanilla and creased leather. Museum mold exudes intelligence, hints of youth who study. These are the excesses of some otherworld arts. But because Ms. Woeburne is a creature of clocks, she is soon unable to help it, and begins: "The Anarch spokesman approached me a few hours ago about Fairholm's placement. Christina Kallas," Serena clarified, as though that raucous voice and blackbird mane might have slipped his memory. Her drink went uneaten. Her knees pressed together in the moderate climate of this upholstered room. "It took some bribery on my behalf, but she has agreed – for now – to support it. I think. From the sound of things, however, the State's opinion about our taste in Barons is poor."

"Hmph," he chortled, amused by her choice of words. There was nothing Anarch about Claudia Fairholm. She was artiste in personality, and thereby worshipped individualism, but Clan Toreador's Primogen loyalties were as well-established as the ribbons worn in the gloss-thick ringlets of her black hair. "Be that so, I trust they will find ways to adapt to the change. Abrams was hardly what one would call patriotic, to be sure."

"To be sure," the Seneschal echoed, a taut voice and spry jerk of nod. She was an officer who deferred. "But however centrist or cold-blooded he was, Isaac was theirs. In name only, perhaps, though names are powerful things these days. There isn't much else for them to guard."

"One might argue there hasn't been for some time. They will adjust. And if it proves more difficult than we otherwise hoped, you now have an ace up your sleeve."

Ms. Woeburne's mouth thinned with doubt. "Unless they eject her, which – to hear the Den Mother tell it – seems increasingly likely as our ventures falls into place."

Strauss blinked leisurely, the onyx of his pupils tranquil, imperturbable, astute. "I was referring, of course, to the Nosferatu."

"Of course," Serena amended. She drank.

Serena Woeburne was proficient and trustworthy to a point. She would not renege on those who protected her in a talking-head position the corporate badge did not personally deserve. Fine, perhaps, to allow such a badge leeway for cleverness in this limited role. But few vested their futures in the placation Jyhad of Seneschals, few relied on cooperation from Anarch associates, and fewer still presented their throats to the legacy of Sebastian LaCroix.

There was a silent interval as the conversation realigned. Sounds never completely halted in a Chantry, however – at least, not in this one – for Los Angeles, despite its quartered vanity, is a very real city. Busses squeak outdoors. Fires smolder out. A Seneschal nurses her evening cocktail. Energy hums, and more concrete than any other noise in these mint-wood halls or ruby-cushion libraries are the pupils who thrive within it. Apprentices come and go with careful feet in the dormitories above. Their mentor, a mix of tortoise's patience and a bear duke's size, is reassured to hear those floorboards creak as soles press pine. He takes them as an encouragement, and a guarantee of other schemes.

"Has Golden contacted you?" the Ventrue eventually asked. Strauss shook no.

"I have not spoken to Gary personally in many years. Our ambitions have not often overlapped," the Archon explained; she saw no reason to disbelieve him. "But I am privy enough to Nosferatu interests that I appreciate why Baron Abrams fell from their favor, supposing he ever genuinely had it. Quickly do inaction and deception turn mutual understandings into unsavory neighbors."

Ms. Woeburne chuffed her own amusement here. It was the bleak and cynical variety, for bleakness and cynicism were the only flavors of laugh she had. "Yes, well. So does treating them like paranoid bedbugs. Golden may be paranoid, but isn't gullible enough to bite on a ruse that plain. I'd wager he suspected all along who really pulled his net hub on Vine Street, and pawning the blame on us was sloppy of Isaac, besides. It isn't as if they would declare a full-frontal on a Camarilla office," she dismissed, but thought better of it in the following sip. "Not without being sure, anyway. Abrams was foolish to try it."

"Desperate, perhaps," Strauss bettered, a generous tweak, but no less valid for the stereotypes it debunked.

Aloe eyes do not wander in their sockets. He remembers a time when the Ventrue's gaze could not still itself in this residence, drawn with tentative marvel among a dozen foreign treasures: ivory beads, cassia incense, crystal eggs, frankincense, plaques full of arrowheads, dye sweeps browning symbols on thinly-shaven stone. Oh, there is witchcraft here; of that there can be few skeptics left. But she has become accustomed to these hints of the fantastic. That deconstructionist's gaze no longer races, no longer flickers, no longer bothers with what an empirical mind knows it will never understand.

She sits there, relaxed as she can be, and the Seneschal feeds from a tiny cup.

"Before we discuss the events in Hollywood, let's have a bit more on our situation at home," the Archon suggested. His vast, heavy hands settled comfortably on their tabletop. Woeburne's strict chin bounced _yes_. "You mentioned Anarch concerns."

One leg tossed itself anxiously over the other. Her shoe-tip, frightfully polished, gave the same sharp bob Serena's head just had. "I did. To be correct: Ms. Kallas did. She has anxieties about the permanence of her position. They reacted very belligerently last night when Claudia announced our decision was made – threatened unrest. Granted, Christie has pleaded this case to me before, so take her word for what it's worth."

"And what do you gauge it is worth, Ms. Woeburne?"

She hesitated. The stripe of hair, mousey and over-conditioned, sternly drew her back along its spine. Each half was separated into a neat, symmetrical piece. "I don't know. The Den Mother has been honest – and less than honest – with me before. She has no Regent to protect her. Fortunately, Nicky Shih claims everything is transitioning well amongst the Toreador, at least. And it would've been silly not to expect _some_ blowback from this. But I think things will be all right," Serena declared, optimistically, forcing another one of those two-second camp leader smiles.

There is no other option. Seneschals do have Regents – even Archons – to protect them, usher Boards and Primogen, yet _all right_ is the only provision keeping a convenient placeholder where she is.

"I think so, too."

"And as you said to Claudia, it's more a matter for speechwriters to make sure it is. Though that does drag me all the way back to my reason for dropping in: I brought you the electoral forecast for next month's Board meeting." The trim folder sat silently, tellingly, beside a vase full of pussywillow. A catkin had fallen off and thumped across the sticker that read _ARCHON'S OFFICE – CLASSIFIED_.

"Mark's?"

"Oh. No," the Seneschal corrected, a moment of sheepishness as she did so. "Ms. McByrd's."

Strauss's spectacles gleamed as his head tilted forward in a single knowing, grinning dip. "I take it that our Praetor is upset with current events, then?" The Archon's tone made it hardly a question. Candelabra light, tallow melting long fingers over pewter, lent a glow to the gentian dome of skull. His brow was a powerfully intellectual ridge upon that profile.

"Well, he isn't pleased about it." Ms. Woeburne's dry-humor talent for understatement was one of her most endearing qualities. "But the numbers are good."

"I am familiar with Annette's work, and I don't doubt that they are."

"Yes. She's very bright," Sire praised in a deferential way that lent no credit to herself. "I've asked her to transcribe the upcoming Free-State forum in Nocturne, so maybe that will help us determine how unstable their leadership really is. Ms. Kallas has been made aware. They should let her in and out with minimal trouble." A positive prediction, all details considered – but it was news that also brought pause. The violent, turbulent history of her embroilment with Los Angeles's Anarch Party was written in one irreverent twitch by Serena's unkind eyebrow. "You know. _Relatively_."

She is not as impressive or pertinacious – not as carnivore-toothed – as the Prince who preceded her. But Regent Strauss never got Sebastian LaCroix into this room, and that difference is appreciable after Los Angeles saw fit to replace a maverick judicator with his straight-laced office aide.

"Maybe Gary will build us some of our own hubs," she jokes, wishful thinking, tongue in her cheek. "And I won't have to send my Childer face-first into disasters anymore."

The Tremere gave a slow, mountain-owl blink. He tapped at the side of his glasses. Circular lenses made those starless, deep-set eyes look even larger and blacker than they were. They were the sort of spectacles a gentle doctor wears; a mind with warm-heart; a gentleman of the world, perhaps, as the nineteenth century boomed electricity and smoke. They were the eyes of a man who always knew more. "I am to understand, then, that he has not called you since we last spoke."

"No. But he is communicating intermittently with Claudia. That I take as a good sign."

"Let us hope he continues in that vein. You have done the Warrens a rather large favor that left their senior's hands spotless. And beyond combating the Sabbat breach in that precinct, a duty which – as you've said yourself – Abrams ignored too long, it matters little to Golden whom lords over Hollywood's streets."

She hummed concurrence. "That's true, Strauss… but I suspect he mostly wanted to see if I could. Or would."

Another chuckle. "No doubt about that, Ms. Woeburne."

Her smile, this time, was humble. It was the human effort he saw most. "I suppose I've been phenomenally lucky how things have timed themselves out."

"Oh, indeed – but I believe we would have arrived at this pass eventually, one way or another. Evidently the former Baron approached you at an opportune moment. His concerns with treason, however, were largely a product of how that district has been run these past few decades. It is not altogether curious that Abrams would prefer shielding his reputation from further damage by asking your office to eliminate traitors as opposed to issuing orders himself. Doing so kept him from revealing a Benedict to his own… as well as to the Brujah downtown, whose brotherhood is questionable at its very best. And it is possible, we should remember," Maximillian mentioned, a wise, conspiratorial flick of brows aiming toward the ceiling. The man was a master storyteller. He could steep an atmosphere with emotion, with second-thoughts, in seconds. "That he would have used the explosion as blackmail against you farther down the road."

"I thought about that. But I've also thought that Gary would never have responded to my outreach if I wasn't already halfway in the middle of something with Isaac."

"I may have had something to do with that," Strauss confessed. Ventrue and Tremere are very different creatures, more cousins than sisters, but there can be some camaraderie between them. Maximillian understands the need to cooperate. He is not without masters himself.

Now more than ever: he is not without masters, and not without expectations that loom.

Serena did not startle; her nerves were too deadened by decades of unpleasant surprises. But the Ventrue's expression did heighten. "Did you notify them?"

"Nothing so dramatic. I merely made sure your desire to communicate with Golden was heard by the right ears – and mentioned that you were open to certain… terms," he decided, "that communication might entail. But I no, I did not entreat the Nosferatu myself. I would not have been able to even had I wished. We knew no more about how to initiate contact with them than you yourself did at that time."

"Terms," Ms. Woeburne repeated, cardinal mouth crinkling, a London gin smile. "I suppose you couldn't have anticipated the particulars of theirs."

"No, I could not have. And I am not entirely sure I would have proposed this undertaking to you had they been clearer. Though it ought be admitted: removing Mr. Abrams did serve our long-range purposes in Hollywood."

"It did, but."

"_But_?" Strauss asked, mildly curious, for it seemed she had finished there.

"But for the hoops." Another tart-ginger smile. "Making me finagle their telephone from the man I was asked to dispatch is a bit excessive."

"Ah, yes. Gary Golden does favor an elaborate song and dance. Yet I am sure that detail was only a safeguard to verify the caller, and to be certain the trap was prime."

Ms. Woeburne took a very cool swallow of what was now lukewarm blood.

"That's quite a rat," she noted – affronted, bemused.

They are meat-eaters. The consistency of the meal does not matter. Their food-chain is built from mammal flesh.

The Seneschal finishes her glass in a collection of restrained, self-conscious mouthfuls. Many hours have they spent in this study, yet she has never disarmed. He can recall no Ventrue ever doing so – not in his residence, at least, and likely nowhere but the naked breach of a bad dream. That this one is perhaps more highly-strung than her venerable peers does not reflect poorly. On shark nights, she is a mako among whites. She has a prerogative to be swift, make hard turns, and bite with brute force at the rare flash of belly she finds.

And indeed, Maximillian finds, there is something snaggletoothed about that mannerly smile.

Their dialogue thinned to a trickle. Most of this business had already been discussed, but it is common for ancillae to need reinforcement, and Maximillian did not mind. Worthy Regents act as a quencher – of parched brains and literal thirsts. So they would conference. They planned and replanned and post-planned. When she felt satisfied – much as the woman could be – Ms. Woeburne would stand, just as it passed right then. She rose with her empty cup. She gave a needless second thank-you, routine. And she quickly moved to place it, equally routine, on the same table that held tonight's documents.

Serena picked up the loose willow bud and plunked it right in. Cotton soaked up leftover blood.

"At any rate." Within instants – before she could finish her sentence – the delicate catkin had crumpled into a wet, pathetic pink. "Things are proceeding as we guessed they might. There's no need to regroup at the moment. I just wanted to keep you up-to-date with the measures I've taken."

"I appreciate it, Ms. Woeburne." Strauss nodded her goodbye. "As always."

"Yes. If it's an interesting read, I'll have Annette forward you the transcripts of that meeting."

"Thank you."

"Yes." It was her best display of _you're welcome_ – the recognition of a worker unaccustomed to thanks.

There is a hesitance, an embarrassment, about what comes next.

The Seneschal never makes eye contact when she does what she is about to do. Ms. Woeburne will find something to busy her sight and hands – sometimes a report, sometimes a window, tonight that porcelain jar of flowering sticks. Worrying fingers reorder the sparse bouquet, press lightly on the twig tops to test their health. This is a relatively new development, the courage to fidget outside herself before higher-ranked Kindred… but the shame is as old as the start of their tale.

She used to ask every day they met. Then every week, and every month after that. It has been a long time since Serena hoped or feared enough to speak his name with regularity, but though the questions have stymied and the dread waned, she still frets enough to try. "I don't suppose you've heard any word about…"

The gentle chide of an Archon's frank look says no. He has heard this question many times. There has never been an answer to give.

The Ventrue's lips pursed, knowing she should not have asked. Ms. Woeburne does not like feeling foolish. Her fingertip pricked restlessly on the tip of a gnarled bare branch. "Ah. Well," she mumbled; these nights, disappointment is as foolish as a bereft once-protégé will allow herself to feel.

Strauss considered the orphan-child not unkindly, prolonged his patience, and refreshed a goblet for himself. It had been hidden behind the nearest hardback colonnade. Indeed, he rarely used the computer or the desk sitting upstairs in his private room. He had more sentiment than one ought to in regulating this world to data, microchips, intangible space. Perhaps, in clinging to bits of what passed – not from reason or rhyme, but simply because it felt _right_ – they had more in common than a precursory glance of blueblood and blood-witch might yield.

Maximillian would admit a fondness, if not a personal like, for Ms. Woeburne – who stood there stalled, sullen, and splintered her grins. It was the same way he felt for this city. The violent West Coast had never been tame, but those who fight its battles find ways to love them, and love Los Angeles – a fearfully young place that is lit by bad choices, and men who want more.

"You will want to get back to your work," he steered, softly, and the Ventrue took his cue. "I am sure there is much yet to do."

"Yes," she agreed – one last, simple acquiescence – and Serena might as well have already gone.

"Then I wish you a pleasant night, Seneschal. Stop by if you need more advice, but I trust, as ever, the situation is safe in your capable hands. Until then, I look forward to our next talk. And please," Strauss added. She looked back halfway to the great dead sheikh that sat at his table. Mild nature, clement voice, enormous hands; he was an emperor quietly while the small kings around him growled themselves hoarse. "If you are at all concerned about safety, ask Griswold to escort you to the street."

"I'll be all right," she figured, shrugged, and smiled. "Always have been."

Good Ventrue bounced back. Good Ventrue ricochet.

"We'll speak soon, Strauss," Ms. Woeburne promised, and she left.

The Chantry's head did not rise. There was a short series of footfalls outside this chamber door, muffled by carpet, that faded. Someone moved chairs overhead. A drop of wax hit paper, flame eating its wick; Maximillian did not bother flicking it off.

He had a ghoul take her glass and her tidy files set plainly before him.

He opened the folder, and read.

* * *

_**Author's Note**_**: Lots of background politics in this one. If you're wondering about Nicky Shih, he's a character I originally scrapped from the first cut of **_**Byzantine Black**_**, and later restored. His appearances are mostly passive and will be recapped (when relevant) for the sake of **_**holy-shit-red-that's-way-too-much-to-read-a-second-time**_**. However, you and Nines can meet him face-to-face in "Racerun" (BB – Chapter 48) if you're curious. **

**Someone gets violenced in the next chapter. I promise. **


	6. The Stomping of Drums

**The Stomping of Drums**

The Lincoln that stopped outside Nocturne Theatre that night was ragtag, manufacturer black, and rattled with the weight of gunshots taken.

Its driver looked similarly unkempt and armed. He was a man, yes – a _no more, no less, never-wanted-other-than_ man – whose long hands were tight around the steering wheel, who sat on the edge of his seat. Thirty, his face guessed, or maybe that plus five. It was one of those brow-heavy, knife-cut faces with perilous cheekbones that did not easily give up their age. He would brag about the reality if you asked him. He tended to brag a lot. Meant right about half of it; would've fought over half that; would've died only when told, not asked. And nobody had asked. Not in California. Not from that tower. Not today.

The rest, as they say – like other things that don't matter – was moot.

For all that pride, though, and despite those keen cheekbones, there worked a fidgeting quality about the driver outside – an excess of energy, aggressive but inward, that itched this ragged upholstery. You could never seem to catch him totally still. Too much to be done; too much to worry about, especially in downtown LA, where good Brooklyn boys hated to be. He was as rough-knuckle style as this old car: restless eyes, nervous teal; forgotten shave; hair a slick lion brown that looked as though it might rust. His neck was jacketed a cool-weather blue and craned to see beneath shitty park district lampposts. His nose subtly hooked where a magnum butt once snapped it. His shirt was pink.

Mercurio muttered to himself as he backed the car into place, heard a squeak of tire, and jiggled his keys _off-out_.

"We're here," said the woman beside him, obviously, her voice a deadweight buzz.

"Here as we're gonna get, Ms. McByrd. You want that I should escort you in?"

"No," the Ventrue dismissed without looking at her chauffeur. A red braid, twisted into wildfire, stared at him while Annette reached for her belongings: portfolio bag, umbrella, gun. "You made decent time. That's pretty much all I needed. So, from here on out: just watch my back across this lot. And if anyone – or anything – suspicious turns up in the next hour, ring me. Ring me quietly. I'm not planning on getting killed."

"Don't think many people do, Ms. McByrd," Mercurio noted, but was shut up by a glare that withered.

The woman in his car did not waste her time quibbling. Annette McByrd wasted very little time at all – she ran like a steam engine set to a stopwatch, the chiseled tusk of her face inhospitable beneath its splotches. Freckles, of course – constellations of them. Twelve dozen doe spots, sloppy clusterbombs; they couldn't soften the war beak of that nose, but were a small humanness to remind him of vampire youth. He out-aged her. She was not attractive, not well-combed and apathetically dressed in tan raincoat and slacks – looked the role of a Harpy or tactician – but measured her death in years to his decades. She did not count coup. She knew little of combat, and in anticipation of firefight, required a bodyguard that her master – his master – their master – provided.

Seneschal Los Angeles provided what she could, and _what she could_ was indeed a great deal – but less, this city noted (and Mercurio tasted) than the man who had preceded her.

There had been only minor shuffling in the acquisition of a Sire's assets – a blip on the radar, a bubble in his glass. Ms. Woebune was largely unaware of her master's ghouls prior to this mess; the diplomat grabbed a file in a desk, read and reread his name, then so made inquiries. Mercurio supposed it was a good thing she had. All that ruckus downtown – a spectacularly quiet ruckus, even within the Kindred community – and no one thought of an ex-Prince's surviving servants. No one called to inform him. No way of telling LaCroix had gone, really, until someone decided to five months later. There was no letter or reassignment missive. He never missed a shipment of blood.

But there was one day – a sticky, mosquito-bite, melted plastic June morning – that the corked red vialfull unwrapped, uncapped, and went down just a little different.

A half-year Bond was in place by the time Mercurio met Ms. Woeburne. He'd been summoned to that house on Mirada Lane with no explanation and no forewarning. Turned out neither were needed. The ghoul walked across an asphalt driveway, into that cool oval room lined bitter pecan, and simply stopped for the woman who did not stand up to greet him. He knew instantly. There was nothing to question – something implicit – in the sharp, new, recognizable slant of Serena Woeburne's jaw. Mercurio had never encountered this vampire, not even once. He knew nothing about her or where in the hell a politician who pulls phrases like _good neighbors_ and _social_ s_olidarity_ had come from. But she was something he had seen before.

She was a something that – when he would catch her between appointments: starting at nothing, mind rewashing, terrible emptiness – shot wet nitrogen right up the road to his brain.

It was more than the stiffness of shoulders or the lines of the dark suits she wore. It was more than veiled hostility or the barb of an accent. You could smell it on her, in the plastic canisters he was sent: imperiousness, gravity, old stuff. Too much of it would poison you. Mercurio had never heard of death by imbibing vitae, but he could tongue the thick Ventrue blueness on his gums – and, just as he'd known his master's Childe by the authoritarian way her body settled itself, he'd known their clan was noxious.

It was the same kind of monster. It was the same bone-deep debt. Ms. Woeburne disliked affection or messiness; she kept his blood payments widely spaced, and those who'd obey her at a cool arm's length.

So it couldn't be surprising that Annette McByrd, Childe of LaCroix's Childe, was like most Ventrue he had met in his indentured servitude: weedy, disciplinarian, unpleasant in the way of overprivileged children grown up. She sneered rather than smiled. Her dappled hands were skeletal and, Mercurio imagined, exceedingly cold.

"I'll leave if things in there get too tough or too unfriendly," the woman told him, a comfort to herself. One set of those whipcrack fingers were currently wrapped around her umbrella. It looked dangerous – more dangerous than made sense, than was rationale against the deadlier threats of guns and piercing fangs. "Unfriendly towards me, that is. Their bigwig already knows I'm coming. Nothing should be a surprise. Nothing should go wrong."

"Yeah. Should." Ventrue liked guarantees. Mercurio had been working around them long enough to catch the imperfect declaration. "I'll keep my eye out. Anything specific I oughta look for – anything goes funny in that meeting – send me a heads-up about it. What you can. If you can."

The ghoul flicked his peripherals, watching down long-distance streets. Couldn't get fat and lazy in LA. Mercurio might've been a chubby kid once, chocolate-chip ice cream and too many cousins, but he'd never been lazy, not even then – and this city made its wise guys too busy for sleep. Life lessons, shattered windows and shot-open ribs taught the smarts that stuck. He tried not to get cocky. He always kept one hand on the wheel.

He didn't like parking – just parking; just propping his ass out here to sit and wait a spell – but orders was orders, and you didn't bicker with bosses like his.

Mercurio rolled the windows down to make hearing easier. It was a breezy, wet, after-thunder night –humidity that tried to make you shiver despite the insects. He scratched behind one ear. He puffed air through his blunt, human teeth. "Got an idea how long this'll take?"

"None. I'll be there until it's over or until they throw me out."

"Right. Guess we're hoping that's a figure of speech."

Annette hated the showmanship quality of that flat A. _Fig-ur_ and _oughta_ were like slaps of bad noir. Mob Americana, Rat Pack grandeur – things after which lesser thieves and greater thugs modeled themselves, victims of cinema, someone else's inside joke. He said her name _Mac-Beahrd_. He talked, just a bit, from the side of his mouth.

"Hoping," she echoed, no comradeship.

For what must've made ten double-checks tonight, Ms. McByrd pawed her coat breast where a pistol sat beneath the tweed. It was a .38, mint condition and painted demurely. There was something ill-fitting about that hilt inside her fingers. She overmuscled the weapon, like someone who had never fired it before.

There, across the asphalt, beyond the dumb white parking stripes, flared by an overhead bulb: one black staff door.

She eyed it with dislike. When a person like McByrd ran late, it was always intentional – but you could see from the disgruntled set of her face she'd have liked to be later.

"I'm just going to wait a few minutes before I go in," Annette informed him. They did not look at one another. She was not fond of the cleft pushed deep into his chin like a period point to a man. "I don't want to draw extra attention to myself. Better to wait for an opportune moment. This entrance of mine – that's what it is, apparently – needs to be the opposite of dramatic. As boring as we can make it, which is why you need to stay low in this car."

New names – they were a common thing to have to learn at this job. The Camarilla was a chain with replaceable links. You saw new faces, and new bodies, all the time. But there was something a little stranger about these nights: a small and inconsequential thing, an old-fashioned thing, probably a stupid thing. It was a personal thorn he had to chew on. He would not dare to mention it, and he'd grind it down to swallowable mush soon enough, but for now: there it was.

Before these names – names like Serena Woeburne and Annette McByrd and Samantha Castillo – Mercurio had never worked for women. It was not as different as the man would have thought or looked forward to. There are a certain some that might maybe call him chauvinist, and if those shoes fit, then he guessed he'd have to clam up and wear them. But if a Cold War child knew anything, he knew that there were such things as _This World_ and _That World_; _Our World_ and _Their World_; _Here-World_ and _There-World_. And if a sharp ghoul learned anything: Mirada Lane was definitely _their _There-World. You had to assume nothing but that you couldn't assume anything. But Mercurio had long ago cut himself a deal that if he was fixing to lie, it wasn't going to be to himself… and musty truth was: there ought to a difference in saying _ma'am_ over _sir_.

Except there wasn't. There wasn't – not in _There-World_, not like there should have been – and that absence of difference disturbed him more than anything in almost thirty years of swigging dark, heatless blood.

He felt nothing.

There was no outmoded chivalry or real concern. There was no couched sex fantasy, no tingling-palms desire. There was no compulsion to protect or double-thick devotion; there was no extra force, no delusions of knighthood, no press of loyalty emotion he never managed for Mr. LaCroix. You just couldn't do it. Dead gazes; dead bodies; motions that were mechanical or militant or plain cliché froze over. He just couldn't. He would look over in the seat beside him and try – try to be afraid for brittle bone structure, for female thighs, for walking alone in ominous alleyways. He would picture Ms. Woeburne naked and insist it didn't repel like it did. He would plan out scolding himself into guilt if either of her Childer died under his watch. He would imagine failure in the form of a bullet splattering those red curls bloodily apart.

Mercurio did not like how easily the image came, and he did not like how little it made his stomach squirm.

"Do what you want to do, Ms. McByrd. This is your game. Just tell me where you want me to be."

She scoffed – flat, unimpressed, unwantable. "Don't be stupid. You know where you need to be. And we both know whose 'game' this is."

No matter what he did: _nothing_.

Mercurio explained this in the only way that let him dream he was still human – rationalized with the chill of Woeburne's mile-long stare, the round face no color red could make warm; or with the flint sandwiched between McByrd's freckles and hard cheeks; or with the girl-grimace of a lastborn who, beneath pretty lashes and bronzer, was anything but girl. There was nothing woman in any one of them. Beneath each face was the same monster he had always seen in Ventrue. Winter invasions, false friendships – the Seneschal's Office was every bit a legate as an absent Prince.

Sometimes Mercurio wondered what happened to Sebastian LaCroix – there one conquest, gone the next. But he would never ask, and he would never really care to know. Maybe Ms. Woeburne had eaten him. The word diablerie inflamed Kindred for specifics a ghoul only halfway understood, but despite her clean face and vanilla smile, Mercurio thought those small white teeth could pull apart a heart.

He was jonesing for some late-night coffee. He sighed through the bump of his nose.

"S'pose we do. Anything I should be relaying to her?" There was a five o'clock shadow scratching beneath his neck, over its apple, the spot that never stopped feeling so bare around vampires. His masters had devoured each other, ripped the flesh off their predecessors' bones – a long line of betrayal, a thousand years of one essence swallowed and internalized and brought to life in someone else. It was a family tree of glacial, inhuman, industrial bodies. "Nobody told me a thing – not more than what you told me tonight. Because I'm just sitting here with my foot on this pedal otherwise."

"Then just sit there with your foot on the pedal," she told him. His curiosity irritated her. Not knowing how to answer irritated her more.

Mercurio did not want to fight, so looked away from Annette McByrd, towards the crumble-stone and false mahogany of Nocturne Theatre. It was a deteriorating building that smelled of soap buckets and stale air conditioning. Disrepair made attempts at luxury ugly. You could see where someone had scraped off last season's play posters, could see a few display bulbs burnt out. What color remained was drab, inhospitable and vaguely disastrous. These were the markers of cut funding and vacant seats, of never selling-out; to people like him, they reeked of Kindred claims. No one sat inside the ticket booth but a sign that read _CLOSED MON-THURS_. No lot valets checked the lamps or locks on car doors. Ghost lines of graffiti were clear through the sud stains that washed them away.

They were already underway inside. The thunder of Brujah discontent shook through board and bricks – under odd pauses, into that same hand he'd gripped tightly around his wheel. There was a bloodthirst, rumble, a roar.

"What do you guess is going on in there?" asked the ghoul, an understatement to hide nerves that tangled only for himself. There was a little silver button missing off his jacket neck. "Seems rough."

Ms. McByrd lifted thin brows in displeasure and needlessly adjusted the strap of her bag. "Political response," she replied. "Testing ranks and pooling ideas. It's how the Brujah organize." Five seconds of pause. A glass thing broke inside. The Ventrue's long, spotted face overacted _nonplussed_. "They call it a Rant."

_Rant_: stomping, spleen and frustration. That swell came and went in gale lapses; it dimmed, rose, then collapsed into what sounded like coup d'état.

"Jesus," was all he could think to say.

"Like I said: nothing's expected to go wrong here." She buttoned a few pocket snaps, then checked and rechecked – _eleven, twelve,_ he counted – the holster beneath its brown-bag leather lapel. What coldly sat there could not console. In want of something more concrete, habit pulled her eyes, waterlogged caramel, to their reflection in a rearview mirror. Annette wasn't what Mercurio would call a good-looking woman – attention-catching, curry powder on whole milk colors, but not good-looking – yet at least there was nothing childish about her, nothing vulnerable about the freckles she wore. Missions with Ms. Woeburne's younger Childe were awful. Curlicues and fruit perfume – he couldn't think of Samantha as anything more than a sharp-toothed kid. "But you know as well as I what that does and doesn't mean. If I need to make what someone might call, say, an expeditious exit…"

"I got it."

She unbuckled her seatbelt. "You'd better."

Ms. McByrd was a vampire who liked to think of herself as more self-sufficient than she actually was. But Mercurio had killed a lot of vampires – something this one, plier-joints and inhospitality, didn't seem to realize.

To people like him – the trigger-pullers, the acquirers, the barely-matters people – worse than a schemer was a Kindred gone berserk. Much as Annette looked infallible, much as Ms. Woeburne chilled his blood and Mr. LaCroix had intimidated without trying at all, confusion made a beast fiercest. Sometimes the sharp-toothed kids were more treacherous than those who convinced themselves everything was under control.

Stalling kaput, McByrd got out of the car, shut it, and then there was a nest of lava knots waking away.

"I'll… you know." His reassurance echoed lamely across the damp lot. "Be here."

Annette did not glance back. She hoisted up the flat of her hand, as if to say "_enough_," and touched the outline of handgun one last time. Brujah clamored within layers of cinderblock. The walk she had was bristle-backed. He watched, knowing how easy it was to see bits of skull fly.

When she opened that door – just enough to slip in – the noise sounded briefly, but fearfully, like drums.

"Jesus," Mercurio said again, and cooled in the carriage of his quiet black car.

**II.**

Outside it was drums. Inside, the boil of a full den's voices intensified, separated, into a thousand bits of hail – they were something like tropical storm.

Annette ducked into the chill of that murky theatre house mostly unseen. There was a woodlet of elbows, shoulders and unused chairs as the unhappy people gathered to hear or be heard by their small congregation onstage. Being overlooked was ideal for one Ventrue among them. She was met not by hands (fists), but by the same oppressive, agitating heat that accompanied being near to this strain of vampirism. You could not say where it is from. Their bodies were no warmer and no more human than hers; the backs of those many heads, various un-styles of hair, did not bother glaring down a familiar blueblood whelp. Rarely did anyone sit. Their rancor thickened the air and made it difficult for anyone less equipped for screaming to speak.

Ms. McByrd hated them. She could not really give a reason why.

Some say it is biological – that the Ventrue and Brujah are preprogrammed to abhor, to fight. This is the evolutionary fate of two apex predators vying to occupy the same dominion. Annette had no opinions on Kindred superstition, mythos or science; for this Childe, it was enough that they suffocated her, and that she loathed in the presence of their uncoordinated burn. So many times had the Rabble lost wars to better bloodlines. Their pseudo-governments had been easily toppled and leaders beheaded; their grand identity and their hero-past were all but lost to the antagonist haze of being a beaten folk. Yet it was never enough to finally snuff them. Despite all the terrible ends of those who had provoked Clan Ventrue throughout history, this was one inconvenience they had never been able to cleanse or eradicate or grind down into nothingness.

You cannot fight them on a battlefield; one-against one, the Brujah would destroy you; en masse, they would destroy everything else. You cannot satisfy them as a unit, for even within Camarilla ranks, they are too anarchic to agree. You can never give them a sovereign nation, for the moment a Brujah sinks his footing, he will turn to strike against you. There is no coexistence solution. The bad blood between them is too much.

All there was to be done, Serena had said – as perhaps someone had said before her – was to watch them closely, and to stomp the war drums as they rose.

Seneschal Childer were not usually agents who crushed, smashed, pummeled or killed, but documented, listened, reported, relayed. They did not talk or calm or pacify. So, whether these foul feelings were products of instinct or custom, it was normal that the gun beneath her chesterfield seemed heaviest when there was a proclivity to need it. She emerged from a moldy backstage corridor, ducking open pipes and steam scum, at the left rear of this high-ceilinged central room, into which Annette slipped without being noticed at all. Ms. McByrd was getting good at not being noticed. She placed herself in the darkest seat in the very last row.

From where the Ventrue perched, trying to be small, she could every figure parked upon that stage – "rooted" might have been more appropriate, like combative trees who did not want to move. There was very little in the way of reserved speaking or turn-taking. The loudest yellers would climb up before their peers to make grievances known, boo and cheer, or merely holler from wherever they stood. Three stone-faces carrying rifles (one female and two males, Annette noted, in case it might matter) menaced the offstage exits to prevent external interference more than internal riot. The drawn-back curtains and dirty carpets were a dusty plum-purple that poorly framed rebellion. The wood was scuffed with shoe-black and what might have been bloodstain, years or decades old.

Above those spots, arms crossed and mouth petulantly, fearsomely stoic – beside one of the muscled men – was Christina Kallas. She was a defensive belligerent, hair savage, jacket militant, wolf-bristling, and she grimly watched over it all.

This Den Mother was the closest thing to a moderator – or an advisor – they had in what lingered of Free-State Los Angeles. It did not appear to McByrd, however, that she was carrying any firearms of her own. The Brujah's hands were balled tightly and her core clenched as though in preparation for physical violence. But her chin was thrust high, neck bare, attire plain. Plainness won power through the display of low fear. If that was any real judge of confidence, Kallas proved potent despite her detractors; she wore only jeans, hiker's boots and a zipped-up bomber, forest blitz green.

Among the throng of bigger people, focused-forward, Christie spotted Annette quickly. She said nothing, but their eyes connected gloomily across the incendiary space of this tribal court. It was enough of a welcome. The Ventrue started three recorders: handheld, cellular, hidden wire in case they smashed her others. She thumbed open a notepad to scribble in if all else was confiscated.

Better to stare down creatures whose culture it was to eat the submissive ones – better not to busy yourself with work – but Ms. McByrd found it disturbing to acknowledge such people. She was not as violent as her Sire. The matriarch up there was, however – was that and, if you believed her boasting, tenfold more. Annette had been taught never to take Brujah leadership at face-value, and you could see this one felt the need to appear larger than tall shinbones or climber's muscle could make her. The Den Mother hollered and stamped and never stopped frowning. Serena would see this often – see how her people reacted – and purse crimson lips in disappointment. She could not live up to the image demanded by this Great-General city that sucked her in. She could only mimic and shout and hit mightily and fall short.

Given courage by an enemy's inadequacy, McByrd took in the scene. This Rant was much as she'd pictured sitting with that motor-mouth ghoul. The last squawker had finally relinquished his two-minute spotlight – hopped back down into varied support – only to be replaced by a fair-haired woman, then another man. Both swore openly and spat their plosives. Neither were particularly illuminating. Christie, confirming this, had redirected her attention to a wall dent that showed through powdering white paint.

It gave a good angle of the Den Mother's face. Not a bad face, unexpectedly pretty if you understood its stresses; not a great one, if you'd been around for the one that came before her. _Solid_, if nothing else… a word probably lifted at some point from Ms. Woeburne. That may have been an insult or compliment, but there was nothing small about those lengthy brave lines, which shunned criticisms (deserved or not). Bruises beneath her stubborn, bosky stare made the black bangs scratching around them look barbaric. Most of that mane had been pulled back into a knot difficult to grab. One of those dark circles might have been laid by a knuckle rather than a sleepless day. There was liner smeared beneath them like a discount war-paint.

Her performance may not impress Ms. Woeburne, but if nothing else, Christie looks the part she plays. She did not do jewelry or Kevlar or symbolism. She was not a Baron who befriended and smiled.

Then again, you could not dare look like anything but a warrior when you took a Ventrue's politics to heart. When you saw Christina Kallas's teeth, they were not being pretty, not persuading, not teasing you into soldierhood or love. Pretty and not-bad couldn't cut it in the West Coast these nights. Pretty was nothing special, nothing that hadn't been done before.

_These nights_ – the clash of Eastern incursion and Western capture where democracy failed – had also perhaps been done before.

LA's new Free-State does not love its Den Mother. Its Den Mother knows that perfectly, bitterly well. She had been the target of several four-letter-words since Annette slunk in; the others were, with little exception, flung at Claudia Fairholm, _bitch-ass Toreador_, _Tremere puppeteers_, and, of course, Serena. They hissed in disgust at the water-weak name. Younger ones sometimes called her _dubya_, a prole's jab at dynasties and at the shorthand way she signed her name.

Christie endured the verbal abuse in iron-gut stoicism. Having aired her main announcements (Hollywood and otherwise) before Annette slunk into the fray, lecturing was not an Anarch speaker's place; Rants were an agitator's time to shine, a footman's forum. Now-and-then, however, the Den Mother would interrupt them – when discourse swung dangerous or someone had talked too long. She would peel back lips to bare fang and roar her way back into line. The majority gave way without much more than a token gesture of protest. _"SIT DOWN,"_ she'd thunder, sending her voice the farthest, beta-cum-laude with an alpha stripe. _"YOU'RE THROUGH."_

"_HELL I AM,"_ the guest onstage would grunt back, but you could see deference in how their hackles slatted low. _"I'LL BE THROUGH WHEN I DAMN WELL—"_

Her throat was raw from so much screaming and often bled by the end of these nights. Christie would hawk pink saliva into tissues or cups or the sidewalk. She would gargle salt where no one could see. She did not swallow it down.

She _did_ lunge forward, aggression threatened, and that would be _"ENOUGH!"_

And, because Brujah respect strength, it usually was.

But sometimes it was not.

Christina Kallas has her supporters – those whose loyalties she has won – either through blood, San Francisco war tales, urban legend lineage, or by beliefs deeper than any one leader's strategies. There are youth impressed by the toughness she wears and gory rumors of what that first Kuei-Jin landing must have been like. There are some who appreciate the fact she does not charm. There are several who applaud from desperation; many who obey as simple newcomers to LA, for there is an influx of neophytes now. There are even a couple strays from this yesterday State impassioned for Christie because she follows closest in the steps of a martyr they'd adored. And there are, in this disparate and limping tribe, a few realists like herself: those grave, disheartened handfuls who know that to contest the Camarilla, one must survive them first.

Brujah are collectivists driven to abominate, are hero-worshippers who want to fall in love with a leader. In times of unity, they can afford their handsome darlings and their family squabbles; in times of hardship, losing one dooms them to suffer the other.

Neither were enough in times like this – when Christina Kallas introduces Camarilla placation plans to a horde of woebegone brethren – and one of those brethren decides to trip her off that stage.

"I'm not finished," insisted a voice – one near the first aisle, that had spoken already, but steeled with confidence knowing it could speak again. This voice was male and scrutinizing, but of its qualities, most apparent was an odd clarity, strangely well-pronounced for its strength. Christie's face slackened when she heard. If you had been an Anarch, you see, you would have recognized the voice as belonging to Gregory Isaiah. He was a vocal, shrewd Sacramentan whose fists were large, eyes brilliant bronze zircon a in a dark face, and bite less sharp than his words. Narrow features lent nose and chin an intellectual, whittled look. More important than the Brujah's average size or New England English, though, was the spoken character of his adversity – implications that hurt worse than punches. He wore black hair closely-shaved, wore nice button-downs over jogging pants and factory-white tennis shoes. There was a beauty spot punctuating his bottom lip and a natural propensity to pick holes into everything he heard.

"You already had your say. More than," Kallas gruffed, brows unkind, not seriously trying to dissuade him. One of the gunners standing behind her – a kid trying hard to be huge with baby-face and big, beautiful stare – grew visibly uneasy.

"Having another one." He flattened both his palms across the lip of Nocturne's stage; he did not need to heft himself up. "Unless you're going to stop me."

She jerked _no_. It was a grumble: "Not if you don't piss me off."

They called him Elbows for the way he stole a courtroom more than the gawky way he tended to fight – _all knees and elbows_. It was a stupid nickname for a distinctly unstupid man.

Isaiah was only part grandstander; he did not overestimate the lukewarm invitation. Real detractors didn't beat their chests onstage, for a dozen of those performances had been pitched tonight, few of them meaningful. Instead, the Brujah remained where he was – feet anchored into the ground, countenance lucid, a façade of patience. Dust ashed the clean brown undersides of his hands.

"You said," he began, carefully – or, with the furrow in his brow, at least seemingly so. "That Claudia Fairholm inherited that seat on the basis of her clan. Hollywood is Toreador Domain, been for a hundred years, and nobody's arguing that. But what you don't say-" Gregory paused, and the arch of his brows, shapely but stern, lifted dangerously. "-and what I take issue with. What disturbs me. Now that's got less to do with Fairholm than it's got to do with who's reading that inheritance."

"Are you kidding with me?" Christie spat, forehead wrinkling, top lip showing the ridge of eye teeth too often used. She took two large steps towards the end of that stage – where Isaiah's fingers still sat, unmoving, unadorned, undaunted by the nearness of boot toes. "Do you think I would even sit in a Camarilla room without demanding some kind of proof the roof wasn't about to fall in? This is what the Toreador want. I got absolutely no say in who they play castle with."

"Which Toreador?"

"Take a poll," she dismissed. The gunboy back there with the coffee-cake eyes and the pump-action was probably her Childe. Christina Kallas would not have turned away from him otherwise. Especially now, while detractors spoke, her peripherals were live on two supporting guards backstage. They did not bother posting any on the exits. Every Brujah was presumed to defend their councils with deadly force. "You think it's worth hoofing door-to-door in that flake district, asking for some artists' opinions on elections? Go right the fuck ahead. Surprise me if you can find ten painters who actually care which clique queen claims Domain over there so long as they get their dues."

"I don't much care what Toreador think. This conversation is not about Toreador," he answered, dictating, growing a little too loud. His palm cut before it fell back in place on a floorboard. "And I think you know that."

"Write a fucking article and tell it to the Freep. But I don't have time to blow on how Hollywood holds their council," the woman chuffed, an indignant, Brujah snub. Her hand gestures were heavy and grew stronger with resentment. You could be sure those striking, anemic cheeks would have in life been boiling red. "We don't have the patience for this – some foil hat conspiracies you slap together because you don't like Toreador decisions, or the way I talk. Here's a revelation for you, Greg: _nobody_ likes Toreador decisions. Maybe you're too fresh to remember the way Isaac Abrams ran his shit," she growled, taking a boot to an omega status. It was well known Isaiah, much as he murmured, had little sway in these courts. He was a couple years younger and had a dead Camarilla Sire. "But it is not my responsibility to educate you about the crock you argue, so it's not my job to listen. We have bigger problems breathing down our necks than fatcats with stencils. Fairholm claims she'll work with us – if she does, we will consider it; if she doesn't, we don't need them, never have. Hollywood is rotten. Hollywood has been rotten longer than you've cared about it. It can keep rotting."

Those who remembered the old director stamped their agreement at his much-maligned name. Annette felt a curling of dread at the return of that sound, but if it had been hurricanes before, this was merely a summer rain. They quieted to let their Den Mother finish, and opposition did not interrupt. That was one of few perks in being figurehead to a sick State: they wanted to hear you, either to quote your wisdom or to shred it apart.

"I sympathize with those across the border who expect better from their courts. But we have to watch out for our own. We guard our own before anything – anyplace – else. You all know where I stand on this," she professed – first to everyone, second to him. As with most things the woman said, it earned mixed reactions. "So I'm going to put it simply: do you want to pick at straws, waste energy on their politics, or do you want to figure out how we're going to respond?"

"From where I'M standing—" At her feet, sullenly. Disconcertingly, infuriatingly calm. "—you made that, and more, pretty clear." The rumble had gone periodically quiet to hear him. Isaiah was not a man who liked to unnecessarily shout, not someone who paraded. He said just enough to rattle the hive. He had a degree in something, came from a middle-set of money, but wouldn't say in what or from where. "From where I'm standing, your stance is that our Los Angeles is going to do exactly what it's been doing. Which is – and somebody, please: call me out if I'm wrong – loading our guns and sitting on them. That, _this_, and a whole lot of nothing."

Christie stretched her fangs full on this one. She reached the edge of Nocturne's stage in three banging footfalls, bearing furious, and addressed him directly. Her nostrils flared. One lean, powerful arm flung out in the general direction of enemies. That was an easy compass in Los Angeles these nights; to find threats, an Anarch need only pick their favorite direction and walk in it. She could feel them boring inside this room.

It was probably not the wicker-crisp of Annette she was feeling, either. Ms. McByrd watched everything with recorders rolling and jaw clasped tight. The Ventrue regretted she had lost her pencil beneath a chair.

"You want to load your gat and march down to Chinatown, bring some terror down on us right now, I'd knock your goddamn head off," Kallas ruffed, winning heckles and lone hand claps. She straightened to let the approval ennoble her. Her Childe did not move. "And I'd be right to do it. We will have our time. We will have more than our time. But if what you want to do is some kind of citywide spray-and-pray-"

"I don't _want_ to do anything. But I have a need to know: if we're going to let the Camarilla in-vote their own Primogen as they please – if patsies like Fairholm can happen to Hollywood – what in the hell is keeping you up there? And more: what happens when you aren't there no more?"

His insinuations – fire-eyed and frowning smart – were loud enough. There was sudden physical discomfort that descended then, as Christie froze, pulling head-and-shoulders back. She seemed to realize the place he had put her. In grounding himself low on that floor, Gregory Isaiah lured forward, and now their contrast made a Den Mother look very much the little captain guarding her center spot. The higher she stood, the bigger this illusion of hierarchy. Lights glared down on that black crown of hair.

"I'm here because this den wanted it," Kallas bawked. Her throat warbled with soreness. "I'm here because I'm the only one who stood up to be. I'm here because—"

"Because you were the first in line. And no one important said you couldn't be. But, I imagine you've noticed: there are others who aren't so sure being an early-bird warmonger is reason enough to let somebody lead them."

"Including you? Awful easy to take potshots when nobody's aiming them at your face, Isaiah. Let's see how loud you can get with the Scourge busting your door down or a Kuei-Jin siege. I bet you don't last an hour. Because nobody else is keeping them from it. Nobody else-"

"We gambling about our future now?" he snorted. A man just behind him was beginning to look livid. You could not tell who with. "Is that what we're doing?"

"We're doing whatever keeps this movement together, you mouthy piece-of-shit." It came out a hiss; droplets went airborne. The hard, emotional voice had devolved to a rasp. "Say what you want. I'm doing more than anyone else."

"That buys you shit. Nobody else has tried."

"You think you can do a better job, get your bitch ass up here and show me."

He might have been able to trump her in dialogue, but a man dubbed for his elbows was not going to clean Christina Kallas in a fight.

"Nobody _lets_ me lead," the woman swore. Four steps took her back towards the middle of that platform, tilted her face to address everyone grumbling just a little below. Isaiah hadn't retreated. But he had taken his hands off the floor. "And nobody accuses me of being unfit unless they're ready to fall off their fucking high-horse to prove otherwise. I earned this title off the backs of dead demons. If any of you forget that, you are welcome to a reminder, and I will make sure it's one you never forget again." Her threat seemed like an invitation. Disquiet hung in the musty scent of disrepair.

In any other court – any real government, Annette added – a bully who so openly bragged violence would have been annihilated. But as much as they worshipped their own liberties and their new philosophies, Brujah justice was of the oldest kind. This pecking order was basic and brutal. Those who hit hardest, charged fastest, bit deepest – or those who looked like they would – often enjoyed the greatest respects. For all that talk of freedom, battle was still the first idol to which they prayed.

Gregory did not accept the blanket challenge – wise choice for him, made of gristle and vocabulary. Ego provocations in Rants were rarely left unmet, however; they were an opportunity for rumors, for greenhorns to get noticed. If you have no status, you have none to lose. Clashes like these were harsh but unlikely to be fatal; they gathered an audience, ignited tempers, and provided the chance for everyone to be seen. Being the brat that got whipped by their elder was better than being no one at all. Maybe you'd even get a few licks in. It made the young excited and the old forget why they'd come.

More important for a Den Mother's purposes: it made them resist in neat, easy turns. Single competitors can be put down quickly. A raised fist isn't harmful until it is only one in a sea.

"This Rant is done with you, Isaiah." And if she said so, so it was. "This Rant is _way_ past done with bitching about Fairholm. I've told you what the situation is," she stressed, one final time, for the disgruntled audience below her. They watched lock-jawed and tight-lipped. One Ventrue twitched with the movement of her writing: _skritch-skritch-skrit_. "Sit on that information in the best way you can. When I learn more, we will talk again. If there's something else to argue out, here and now? Ten minutes: fight it."

Nobody lets Christina Kallas lead. But she did – and nobody doubts this – let Jon Sanders step onstage to yell her down in Nocturne that night.

"Then one of those minutes is mine," the man owned, much as she'd allow him, more than those who could actually damage her dared.

Jon Sanders was a Toreador – enormous fucker, maybe two-eighty and built of bricks, but there was something predictably soft about him. Swaggered like proper Rabble. Dressed all-black like he fell out of the lounge lizard cheap seats. Baby-blues, peach peel hair combed in a cowlick, moustache blond enough to be transparent. He liked to talk himself way, way up. He liked to go around telling everyone how he'd been a personal friend of the late Nines Rodriguez.

Christie could have told a few stories of her own: how she'd been one day too late to stop where they were; how, anotherday, she'd fed their Baron her blood as a pier burned down. But they had not shared those particular war tales, for they were failures, ones no one wanted to admit. Everything in this city had been such a wilting defeat. So Angeltown spoke about nothing except victories – exaggerated triumphs – against evil, against incredible odds.

Neither did they want to admit the circumstances of those failures – nor the Ventrue who had helped them out of it, truck full of weapons, black prints all over her face.

She hadn't seemed worth remembering. Christie didn't like to think about that evening; didn't like wondering what LA might look like if one unimportant blueblood gun had the misfortune to die on Santa Monica Pier.

And Christie did not like the metaphor of Serena Woeburne – blood-splattered, hands shaking, trying to hold the Free-State's pieces together in order to save herself.

"Now if that wasn't a big fucking unsurprise." Kallas folded her arms, a show of coolness, of her bold lines. Tiredness swept the room – muffled groans, guttural mockery. This was a routine everyone had seen before. Their Den Mother had no need to flinch while the large wall of neonate righted himself before her on that washed-out theater floor. "Sand has _words_. Sand wants to ride on his buddy's tail wakes. Who the fuck would have figured Sand couldn't get through a Rant without opening his big goddamn trap in front of this State. You heaved yourself up here to share something worth our time, I wonder, I hope?"

Annette was not familiar with the faceless ranks of Anarch families. So maybe it really wasn't worth worrying – didn't merit the way a Ventrue scrunched, instinctively, for the bulge of her pistol. Maybe their scornful Den Mother was honestly not intimidated by fledglings with grudges. The world is full of maybes, Serena liked to say. In those couple moments, as dissenters realigned themselves, the only not-maybe was how his shadow fell over Kallas when he stood up tall.

"_For crying out loud," _a female mumbled some three rows below where McByrd had settled down.

Her confidant:_ "Bout to get someone's head bashed in."_

"_What a fucking circus."_

Their conversation perked the Ventrue's ears. She made a footnote of it; she labeled the characters _BRUJAH, BRUJAH (MALE)_.

"When the fuck did this become a closed forum? I'm not asking your permission to my opinions," Sanders slapped, hollow bravado when she'd already given him leave. He had that type of voice – heroic tenor, confused consonants, _dees_ and _bees_ like a backhand. Almost a Brujah, _almost_ revolution; Jon was a Toreador three-fourths of the way. His musculature was obviously the kind just for looks. His shoe leather was a little too uncomfortably nice. "If there's no room for opinions like mine in this house, you better find it fast. You _would_ be surprised. This is an open-"

"Likes of you strutting in front of me spouting this bullshit is as open as it gets." Christie strode a half-circle around him, a casual and menacing maneuver, unclear if she was preparing a blow or anticipating one. His look grew cautious behind the flamboyance of youth. The Den Mother knew what he came up here for, and it wasn't argumentation. This would not be the first time a Rant devolved into blood games. "That _given_, Sanders: we are not here for your sake. We are not accommodating another speech so you can feel better about life. I will not grant you permission to demand our attentions just to blow your goddamn horn. Get to your point – or get off my stage."

Serious ultimatum; it must have sunk. Sand's face whitened – only a little, but more than enough. He stood his ground. His case, though, faltered. "Elbows already said it loud and clear. Call this little Ventrue tag-team what you want, Christie. The Camarilla just put a boot heel through Hollywood. And here we are, asses warming our hands, thinking: hey, wait, maybe this is going to pan out _good_ for us? When the fuck did it get like this?" An audience appeal – the simplest kind of plea there was, delivered when you had no other, or when your courage turned up short. They heard it. They swallowed. "I came from the Hollywood Barony. And I know, firsthand, that this is not how the central Domain used to do things. This isn't why I jumped the tracks to come downtown. This is isolationism. When the fuck did that happen? When the fuck did we forget what we-"

"We already heard what Elbows had to say." The Den Mother's condemnation was a hard, clean chop. Her footfalls had stopped in the foreground. It made Jon look smaller, it put her closer to her people, and it got his shadow off her face. "You offered nothing to this commune; you are wasting our time. And you are pissing me off."

"Because that's what this is about, right? Not wasting your time and not pissing you off? Like that's your whole policy package these days: better not piss them off," Sanders jeered, wide-eyed, fingers wriggling, something from a playground battle gone horribly wrong. His smooth, squarish face went wild and brave. Christie stood stiffening, seething, her pupils swelling murderously in the too-small whites that boxed them in. "Don't piss off the Kuei-Jin; don't piss off the Ventrue! Say what you want about Fairholm, think what you want about Hollywood – but whatever the fuck you do, don't piss anybody off!"

Doubly important to impress the Brujah when you were not one. Kallas was expecting someone would stand to pick the fight she offered – for moral superiority or attention or, possibly, just a little distraction from everything else. Usually Hudson or Turtle or some otherwise juvenile fuck vying for popularity points amongst their peers. She didn't pay them much mind.

Competition finds ways in the staunchest collective. Like the kids outwailing each other over Jeremy MacNeil all those years ago, Sand played up his drama, and hoped that would be win him something.

It won nothing from Christie. There'd been no one here to outwail when she first heard Nines Rodriguez was dead. There had hardly been an LA den. All their sergeants and centerpieces were already blown to dust.

"Don't tell me about the Kuei-Jin," she snarled, and for a moment, there was a hush. A little excitement, some gossip spread, a past a leader didn't like to talk about; this was the stuff of tall tales and how Brujah Barons are made. "And don't preach on enemies you know nothing about. Rubbed elbows in Abrams's Hollywood and now you think your 'experience' means something here? This isn't Hollywood, you preening little shit. And this isn't your gang fights and Tzimisce pups. These are the front lines. When Chinatown decides it's time to strike, they will strike first here – and yes, pissing them off before we are dug in for that night would be a _very_ bad idea."

Christina Kallas might not have been the Kuei-Jin killer some rumored her to be, but she was not someone to be pushed about. And the Den Mother was terribly right about this.

Sanders wasn't done, but he did gut-suck, and he did backtrack. "It's not even about them. Not just about it. If we're going to fight anyone, we should be calling the shots on when and where that happens. But we're not. We haven't been. And there's no reason to assume we will be unless something changes in that court between now and then."

"Chain-of-command," Isaiah whispered, but it wasn't a whisper at all.

"Chain-of-command. _Why_?" Sand seized that word before Christie could tell Elbows to shut the fuck up. "Why on earth are we letting the Ventrue define this war for us?"

"They define nothing. They might think they do and I sure as hell am not going to correct them, Sand – are you? Politicians don't determine what happens on a field of war. If they've forgotten that lesson, they will have to relearn it. But until then what we have is an advantage at their exp-"

His crux: "Then why did we wait for a wave from that office when Abrams was killed? Why do we wait on your people before we figure out what it means for ourselves?"

This was an accident. It infuriated her. "My PEOPLE are right here," the Den Mother boomed, disturbed enough by the provocative slip to turn around on those people – to show the hunch of her spine, the smallest point of her back – jaws pared open over the biggest of a Brujah's teeth. Jon Sanders recoiled all that billboard muscle like he was going to get hit. The crowd anticipated it, and there was almost a sigh of disappointment when Isaiah used this leeway to nudge back in.

"The people you just sold a Camarilla Hollywood to?" he prodded, safer with a different man now risking the sting of Kallas's fists. She twisted sear him with a look.

"I don't SELL anything. I told you what we have ahead of—"

"Told us what we got dealt," he finished. "By the Ventrue."

Ms. McByrd made no note of this, but glanced at her paper, aware of the blots and mistakes – more aware of the blood inside each knuckle of her hands. Maybe it was a mistake to trust the neutrality of Brujah communes. Maybe they should have snuck, hidden, spied. Her writing took on a fine film of desperation, of urgency. '_Don't see me.'_

Christie stalked back towards where those hands once sat, slamming her foot right where Gregory's pinkie would've been. "This is not the issue. THEY are not the issue. I am not the issue. The issue is keeping up our momentum before the Kuei-Jin storm this coast," the woman swore, language clean, but conclusions somehow a curse. She sounded horribly serious and deserving of respect. Yet she had begun to look caught between them, young buck and smarter peer, a wild dog being snipped at by her pack. "The issue is—"

Sanders couldn't resist. "Whatever your people want it to be?"

It whirled her on him, fuming, terrible, snorting and teeth. The fledgling pedaled backwards, crunched inwards, but there was a lip of defiance in making his Den Mother roar. Once you got the taste of that livid, better blood, it was hard not to want more. You couldn't chomp large bites; you had to take it out in a hundred tiny nips. You had to wonder if she was not acting out the anger anymore.

Ms. McByrd did not think she'd been acting since that first you-people flew.

"I AM NOT THE FUCKING VENTRUE."

Pen, ballpoint; Annette hated writing in ink. _'Don't see me; don't see me; don't see me.'_

"No, just fucking one."

There was a swing and dull _whud_ and that drumbeat din – and Jon's blood lit the air with its matchhead smell.

While there are those sustaining her because she stands in Nines Rodriguez's footsteps, there are others decrying for that very same reason – those who whisper Christina Kallas forgives murder; that she panders to the Scepter who killed him for pats on the head, for special privilege, for a little authority. And there are some who wonder if, perhaps, an early-bird warmonger is guilty of much worse than the euphemism of fucking with Ventrue.

And that a last-minute Den Mother cannot abide.

Christie punched Jon Sanders's face hard enough to rip open his gym star jaw, hard enough to sit him down on that center stage, and hard enough to split two fingers of her hand.

Danger energy sparked through the theater again. Testosterone, belligerence, division of ideologies – the entire row in front of Annette lurched forward as though they wanted closer to that violence. Sanders groped dizzily along his face where he'd dipped over at Kallas's feet. A splatter-stain covered the crumples of rainslicker he wore. Hairs bristled, McByrd clutched her belongings tightly, not least of them that pistol lump.

The Brujah stood stonelike where she was. She did not bother watching Sand – cringing, closed-eyes – try to regain feeling in his mandible. More drops snaked between her digits, through the clasp of that painful fist. You could just see its halo – a faint, uncertain, missable blue haze. Potence; she squeezed them so hard it made red flow. Annette realized with an odd twang that the nails were painted a similar shade of blue. "I'VE FOUGHT MORE CAMARILLA THAN THE YEARS HALF OF YOU HAVE BEEN ALIVE," she bellowed, a scold, an injustice done to her. It is strangely easy to scream over everyone else with your throat already swollen. She spat on the floor when a cough came up, and it was meat-colored, but no one hawed. No one panicked, though to Ms. McByrd, a Those-People breed, this pecking order all looked like disarray. "I'VE WATCHED MORE MEN DIE TO DEMONS THAN ANY OF YOU'VE SEEN. AND YOU LET A TOREADOR TELL ME WHO MY PEOPLE ARE?"

Are they ashamed of themselves? The Ventrue cannot tell. Her teeth are grinding along with crush of Kallas's injured hand. She is ready to run, but she probably won't make it very far.

"IF YOU'RE GOING TO TALK SHIT—" One bruising kick to Jon's shoulder as he moved. His own blood woofed with the air that boot knocked out. "THEN GO RIGHT AHEAD AND DO IT. BUT NOT ONE OF YOU FUCKS WILL DARE STAND UP IN MY DEN AND SAY I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE VENTRUE ARE. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO MAKE THAT CLAIM. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL ME ABOUT WHAT THE CAMARILLA IS."

When she pivoted again to the congregation below her, Sand spent his one last hurrah – a nice patent shoe swept out to take her legs from under her.

She stomped right through it. His ankle _krunch_ed.

Jon shrieked; broken glass had been made of that cluster of bone, chips poking at gruesome geometry through sock, cargoes, skin. The foot crumpled sickly beneath. Whatever else was left would be said over a backdrop of puffing and wails – until, setting their weapons down, two fed-up riflemen trotted over to drag him backstage. The one Childe left guarding blinked owlishly beneath a knit cap he wore. They did not return.

Annette held her hand down fast when it wanted to leap. She was glad, briefly but powerfully, Samantha hadn't been here to see that. The girl would've lost her lunch. And Ms. McByrd did not want to be outed by a squeamish Childe who still couldn't choke her disgust down. She was not aware, recorder rolling, how jaundiced her own complexion went.

The points had all been made; the order had been reinforced; the pound of flesh had been taken. This Rant had burnt itself out.

"I don't have to tell you anything. You live in this city. You have seen it happening here; you've seen all of this with your own eyes." Finality hardened her last declarations of the night. Christie stood up straight again – straight as she could with the motes in the air, the black fringe on her brow, and the bright scarlet dots on the floor. She looked through her watchers. Her voice had broken low, gravel in a blender, a lot of long-run shouting left for other heated nights. "Things are changing. They are going to keep changing. We will fight the battles that are important to us, and we will fight them longer than everyone else. We have the foresight to understand what important means while the rest of your city attacks itself over court seats and titles. And that is why WE will still be here when the politicians and the witches have eaten each other. We will be the ones standing to war for what we care about in the end. And we _deserve_ that. We deserve to inherit what no one else has the solidarity to protect," she swore – professed it – a deluge of 'we's and birthright that, for all their foreign fire, sounded so oddly familiar. Annette couldn't tell if the stitch catching in her throat was from hoarseness or emotion. There were four in the crowd who rose in support. Isaiah was not one.

The Den Mother paused for a small ovation to stop. That blood was still flowing: tik, _tik_. McByrd startled to hear it – until she realized, never so glad to be unseen, the sound was from a clock overhead. "We will not lose who we are over the shit started by people like Fairholm or Abrams or Woeburne or LaCroix. This is not what we stand for. This is not what we died for." This is the speech she had prepared. "This is not what our forerunners laid down their lives in Los Angeles for – to have us fighting over Camarilla politics and Hollywood's idea of a Baron. Now you can dishonor me. You can call me out. But no soldier in my den is going to dishonor the leaders who died so we could keep on standing."

_Forerunners_? – Annette wondered, disconcerted, if she'd stolen that term from Serena. Maybe Serena insisted on auditing all Fairholm addresses. That was not unlike her. The Seneschal liked her business leveled; maybe she edited and censored and fixed the troublesome words.

_Maybe Serena had written the speech._

It was a wild, disturbing thought. And it was one she shoved aside – because it wasn't provable, wasn't likely, and it didn't matter to her how much of a puppet Christina Kallas could be.

"Throwing your lives away over typical Camarilla bullshit is as much a disrespect to that sacrifice as can be made. That is not what Anarch is about. We don't tear into each other like the rest of the animals because of succession or replacements or medals." Patriotism, ethnocentrism, doomed man delusions; call it whatever you will. McByrd had seen this kind of appeal more times than she cared to count. When you've little confidence in a jury's reasoning power – or when you feared they didn't like you – a smart speaker feeds passions, and looks for a martyr to hail. "That's not the State of Jeremy MacNeil. That's not the State Nines Rodriguez defended. My Sire-"

"Is where?"

Not-Seen Annette knew by now who that was.

He was sitting in a front row chair. His big hands grabbed one arm rest each. She seemed that much taller, that much prouder; he articulated, at rest, what nobody wanted to say. "You keep throwing Smiling Jack around like that's some kind of badge of honor for you," Isaiah noticed, slowly, creeping observations with toxic insight. Christie did not bat an eyelash. You could see disdain through the blackening green of her stare – see her pupils target that beauty spot, her thoughts focus on ripping its whole lip off. "But _we_ are frying out here, and nobody's seen Jack. I haven't. Have you? There's been nothing from that hero you keep telling me to hail – not since LaCroix got bowled out on his face – and not since you've been speaking for this den."

There was silence. Few spoke of those missing from their meets – if this was a breach, fewer knew how to react. For all their tirades and dirty entendres, rarely is something original said in an Anarch Rant. The provocation was cloudy. They wanted to see what she would do.

"You will not," Kallas warned. That bleeding fist undid itself. "You will _not_."

She went no farther. Some things need not be finished to be understood.

"I might have to if nobody else will. Do you know where he is and why it's not here with us?" she was asked. No answer came; the Den Mother looked cold, soaked; but in comparison with her outburst, distinctly numb. "I'm not sure I want to be setting myself up on a barricade somewhere our Elders can't. Or won't. But you can't give me a straight response about that. One might start to wonder if it's because you can't come up with an excuse that sits right, either. You don't know where the hell Jack is. You don't even know," the man saw _through_. "If he's alive – not any more than the rest of us guess. Do you?"

Smiling Jack is not an unusual Sire to have these nights. He spread dynamite and Caitiff in tandem –bombs and troopers when they were needed, or when laws forbade it, or when he felt like doing so. Simple chaos was sometimes the best way to shake Camarilla complexity; that was one lesson you could take from the black sheep who Embraced Christina Kallas. Those abandoned didn't see it so clean-cut as this, and maybe she didn't beneath those one-for-all speeches, either. But this soldier had her purpose. And since the loss of San Francisco, then every hell that came after, now finally LA… one particular Childe of Jack's had decided she needed no relationship – nor owed any consent – to let her Sire's name weight help her lead.

When you make your ideals into people – exemplify the best your comrades can be in flesh – you set yourself a critical standard. If those heroes are not the saints they've been held up to be, are the ideals? If one dies, they must do so for the sake of something – they cannot be wasteful, selfish, capitalistic, cowardly. They cannot be a pointless death or a disappearance. They must be someone to march for and bleed for and to scream over everything else when the collective starts to fray. The besmirching of its great names is not something a State, nor a Brujah, can permit.

"I am not going to tell you again," she threatened, a punishing thing to say in this informal court. It was the least bluster made all night. There was a lack of sentiment or intimacy in how the Den Mother laid down her law. "You will not disrespect the people who came before you. I will not allow that. What your Elders do is not your business or your place to judge. You have not earned that right and I will not stand for it. This den will not tolerate you._ I_ will not tolerate you."

"You all are going to exile me for speaking my mind? _Free-State._ You going to kill me for exercising what that promises?"

Because if Jack wasn't here – wasn't fighting the battles Christina Kallas did – for his sake and hers, he had _better_ be dead.

"Deacon." _Barbarian rule_. "Isaiah opens his mouth again, shoot him."

Deacon used to be a lippy kid. It used to be that Christie shushed her Childe on a daily basis – he'd get into sloppy blows, stupid gambles, bad company; whatever. And, as youth do, the neonate used to protest and bitch and everything else. Mad as that had made her, it was a hiccup to be counted upon; a big-head you knew couldn't stay quiet; background noise. All you could count on from that same lippy kid now was bleakness: fighter's body that didn't much fight; the wan, watery shape of a once-tan face; the posture of someone unsure of himself. Look at that kid now and the sobriety of his church nickname didn't seem like such a joke. You didn't recall the held-back punches or the screaming fits. You recalled a boy stuck in a man's lines. You recalled the awful chestnut squirt of ponytail he used to wear before chopping it off. You recalled how he had introduced himself Rueben. And you recalled the nickname you gave him, sad look and sadder sob story: Rue.

He was more himself again these days – more rue than he used to be. But sometimes she'd do anything to get back to _used-to-be_.

Deacon held his shotgun like a warrior with his arms full of child. He knows not to drop it, but he won't _dare_ hold it too tight.

"You're not going to shoot me, Deacon." Isaiah was still sitting down, fraternity who wrote his own speeches, sounding so sure. "That's not the kind you are."

The man with the gun considered this, weighed it, a stage away from his Sire's back.

"Fuck you," he said, and aimed down the sights at Greg Isaiah's breast.

Maybe it was the impending shot or the smug, victorious heft of Christie's chin that set loyalties in motion. Isaiah blanched, recoiled; bodies jumped up or iced over; breaths sucked in or barked out. Deacon's fingers on the weapon tightened and moved. Ms. McByrd's stomach bounced up then plunged – horrible instinct, that always-there feeling, a barb in the lung. The fair-haired woman who spoke before, a forty-something with sweet-sister face and broken up butcher's hands, had launched to her feet two seats in front of Annette. She had a colt in her left fist and it was pointed right at the stage.

Ms. McByrd was not sure how it happened – but then that barb forked deep and sharp and foul and she was standing up with her .38 hoisted at the back of a Toreador skull.

Everyone saw.

A typewriter _rip_ – magazine fire – and before her blood could petrify, Annette knew she was seen, and she _knew_ she was dead.

"Je_sus_ Christ," Christie muttered, just as the thin waft of white sifted down.

_Panic_. False pulse in her ears and stone in her throat and polar veins. It was all too bright, painfully bright; Ms McByrd could see nothing and make out no shapes but the yellow of the woman's hair. Metal under every skinny digit. Flakes drifting. The stuff had salted new freckles on each back of her hand before it occurred to this predator, so differently bred and so terribly seen, what such a strange snow was.

It was plaster – not death – sprinkled over the branch of Annette McByrd's nose.

The ghoul was standing in the exit doorway behind her with ghost-man eyes, one arm haphazardly held over his head, uzi jutting up.

There came the kind of pause that comes in the eye of a storm; the pause when you know it is not over, the worst has not yet passed, and disaster is close enough to touch. There would have been a hurricane – but Christina Kallas pulled the gun out of her Childe's hands, aimed it skyward, and fired twice. Plaster crashed open at the other end of the room. Everyone that had looked looked-back. Annette used the opportunity to abandon her row and lower the pistol she'd pointed. Mercurio did not follow suit. He steadied his weapon against his belly with the loose-arm practice that controlled human fear; sealant dusted the late July brown of his hair.

She did not move nearer for protection that could not be given. Distraction and unimportance had been their best bets. But the Ventrue could see that same rinse of dread pass through him, the undertow, that _on-her-mind_ feeling. They were perhaps ten feet away from one another at the back of Nocturne Theatre, but it was suitably close to spot the hallmarks of alarm: glossy lips, tight throats, the tension of fire curls in dirt. The ghoul's eyes betrayed fright but his mouth was chillingly, thinly a frown. She was near enough to feel his heart hammering. It reminded her of a mouse – insignificant, off-putting creature that, seconds from being pulverized by beak or talon or kitten teeth, cannot express its terror. It doesn't have the equipment. It doesn't have the mind.

Mercurio may or may not be rewarded for disobeying McByrd's bad directions. Annette may or may not be punished for bold calls – an overaction done to prevent one very important puppet from being killed on her watch. Either way: Ms. Woeburne was not going to be thrilled about the property damage.

Isaiah hadn't moved, but his knuckles around those arm rests were as pale as the stucco floating down.

"—_with enough of this shit_," Christie finished, tossed the shotgun back to her speechless Childe, and glared down at their sloppy piecemail of Free-State LA.

Christina Kallas was not worried over Deacon or Elbows or trigger-happy ghouls tagging along after Annette McByrd. She was certainly not fretful over the Ventrue herself. Instead, all the woman's attention had fallen right on that nicely-done, impeccably combed, neatly-parted blonde head. _Presto_.

One lesson to learn from the Brujah Commonwealth: find out fast who your worst enemy is.

There was a look on the Den Mother's face Annette recognized – knowing, irritated, tried patience. She regarded her benefactor's Childe with annoyance. She did not lend much credence to Mercurio or the automatic he'd fired. That look said it all, a miniature power-show rumpled up into standoff: _this didn't have to be a thing._

Now – a Ventrue tempting crossfire in an Anarch den – it was, indeed, a thing.

Christie's tone had a lash of that nuisance to it when, blasé as chief who'd demonstrated her law, the Den Mother gestured _set-it-down_. "Put the gun away, Georgia. Nobody's dying today."

She did. Georgia lowered back into a seat, brow furrowed, licking her lips as though aware she had been somehow caught.

"I think we're done here," the Den Mother told them. There was a chided, clumsy awkwardness about her flock: pet dogs who knew they did wrong, children sent to bed hungry. They were bearishly aware of themselves and the space their bodies took up as groups began to disperse. Too many personal failings stacked up into one great throe of a collective – something that thrashed mulishly, babyish, when it did not get its way. "Anyone here didn't get their say still wants one, you can sit on it until next round, or you can spell them out to me on your own time. Otherwise: watch yourselves. Don't do anything stupid."

It was as much of a dismissal as they got. A file of frowns, some hushed and some still grumbling, dully shouldered out Nocturne's doors. Annette and Mercurio backed against the shadows of a far wall and waited for safe openings to leave. She could see in the dark how he sweat.

"McByrd." Christie called tersely before they could go. Blood ebbed through her hitting hand. She dropped heavily off the stage, Deacon still guarding, his little-bit of moustache failing to mask the stomach ache he had.

The Seneschal's Childe did not want to socialize. You could hear winches in Annette's flat, surly voice, but she could not see them racking her own back. "No, we don't have any business. I don't need to speak with you. I'm finished here."

"_Wait_," Kallas grunted. Her stare flashed harshly, meaningfully, towards the parking lot. It was a warning, one given for a lone blueblood's sake: _better not step outside_. Better not stumble into a pack of people who despised yours. Better not let Georgia, who'd bustled out ahead of most her denmates – insides knotted over what her outburst might've revealed – spot your red hair on its way to a car.

Ms. McByrd, more chary than proud, heeded the advice. She slunk along the side aisle where Ventrue and servant had pressed themselves, Mercurio lagging ten steps behind, towards Christie – closer for security, not close enough for blows. The Brujah did not care much. She sucked some dry blood from her knuckle and bit the broken thumbnail off.

"Your ghoul's brave as shit," she remarked, spitting out the nail when Annette stepped out from behind the front seats. They did not look at one another. Kallas studied plaster holes; her unwanted guest watched bodies amble out. "Also stupid as all hell."

Ventrue eyes, hickory and still glazed, flicked briefly, appraisingly, at Mercurio as he crept some distance after her. There was nothing to like in those eyes. But in that theater, they held new – uneager – but admitted respect. "Crazy. Not stupid."

"The Annie Oakley routine was a surprise." Christie sounded marginally displeased. The ghoul said nothing and gave no indication he was listening to their conversation, but Annette seriously doubted that. His finger still lingered over the uzi trigger. The fine hairs there were clammy, visible. He was the only human in the room. "Got that pea-shooter up pretty fast, at least. You were almost smart. You'd have been all-the-way smart if I was as thick as you pegged me."

"I saw trouble and I made a call. I'm not saying it was the right one." Nor that she was fully cognizant of having made that choice – of having seen hazards and having let her instincts draw their claws. It was too soon to be terrified. The gun had tucked back inside a coat flap. McByrd fixed her teeth around a strange flavor of surreal. "No one got killed, anyway. We're fine."

"Guess," she figured. Neither spared a glance. There was more to be seen at the exits of Nocturne than in an enemy clan. "Your machines catch all that?"

"Caught enough."

"Then tell enough. Make sure what happened tonight is represented the right way. Give the context. Let her know that I have this as controlled as it can be." They need not say _who_.

Ms. McByrd nodded. The Brujah squeaked her boot toe over one of those ceiling flakes, swiped it into purple carpet. There was not much more to negotiate or tape or react to. Mercurio's jacket shoulders were poised near his ears. Deacon's shotgun nozzle began drooping, slightly, downwards; the Childe's large, emotive eyes flagged wearily. There was no one else left to scare in Nocturne tonight.

A dart of Christie's nose pointed up. Buckshot scattered catwalk grates; one hunk of it had slammed a hole straight through to the insulation, asbestos and sponge. "She's going to _love_ that."

Annette felt her mouth tighten, her lips press, but the Ventrue knew her face snorted _yes_.

"I'm going to check on my people," the Den Mother announced – through with the Seneschal's Office, and with the madhouse of evening politics. There were two particular dissenters that had left very quickly and would need more attention. There was a Toreador on a couch somewhere with his ankle devastated. Her eye skin looked darker than it ever had; it turned everything, tresses to pupil, an even glummer black. "Wait here for a few more minutes, then get out. Don't hang around. I can send them away, but I can't promise some won't come back looking for more shit to stir up. Or you."

"No kidding. I'm gone."

Christie's scoff was not much of a goodbye as Deacon grabbed his Sire's hand, helped heft her back onstage. Ventrue officers do not kid. Ventrue scouts are never _gone_.

"And McByrd." She looked. "Tell her to send the dumb one next time."

Christina Kallas left before any more comments or near-disasters. Then Annette left – before she could think of a comment, or internalize how near to disaster they'd come.

Mercurio did not take long to follow.

**III.**

"What the hell do you figure went on in there, exactly?" he probed, still white as a sheet when she pushed open the same door both Camarilla walked in through. Ms. McByrd did not answer immediately. Nocturne Theatre's parking lot was barren when they stepped out; the tarmac was still soggy; its streetlights popped unspectacularly over few automobiles.

"You saw what I saw," she brushed. Moths flipped noisily overhead. "Or enough of it."

"Nah. I'd only just stuck my head in when the shit hit the fan," the man clarified. Adrenaline warbled the apple up-and-down his throat, but some color had returned in the orange tones of thin cheeks. He moved at an anxious, aggressive lope that rolled concrete pebbles beneath his shoes. It was too tense a pace to notice Annette – walking equally fast, head down, lapels hugged snugly around her sides. "Some mad-dog stunts they was pulling in there. Gangs, headbutts – things like that? The reasons I hate doing business downtown. Try to avoid it whenever I can. S'pose you had to involve yourself; I understand we got a lot riding on that Den Mother not getting her head blown off."

Ms. McByrd puffed as though she were winded. The woman's bones all scrunched up, jutted. You could not draw her scowl. "Not going to talk about it. I have information to consolidate. Guard Castillo if you want to shoot the breeze." A spark of embarrassment made the orders bristly. She seemed furiously, but noticeably, humiliated. "I don't get paid to chew the fat with you. This is actually important."

Mercurio insisted on checking and double-checking the car before either one of them touched it. Brujah liked bombs, he explained, rounding trunk-to-hood thrice. She'd found that most Kindred who favored executions did.

"_Which was why I told you to stay with the car" _would've been an appropriate thing to say, but in light of what had happened, the Ventrue did not I-told-you-so. Once given an OK, she opened the passenger door and plunked in. Both arms wrapped tightly around her ribcage. Her jaw hurt from clamping her teeth so hard.

"_Brave as shit_," the ghoul muttered to himself, swinging into his own seat and shutting the door.

"What are you bitching about now?"

A twist of keys in the ignition. "Don't seem very brave, does it."

Annette disengaged from her anger to shoot him a look.

"Just drive."

"Always do, Ms. McByrd," he sighed, and he did.

The old Lincoln crunched into 961 Mirada Lane later that night. It made good time.

* * *

_**Author's Note**_**: Welcome to Free-State LA. **

**Hope you enjoyed this overextended chapter to make up for the wait. If not, it comes with a happy announcement: Mercurio will be a viewpoint player in LP. I was always disappointed with myself for not fitting him into BB, and have wanted to work with his character for a long time. **

**Can't comment about any pairings at this point, as I am still wrestling with myself about the subject. But there will be more romantic themes in LP than there were in BB. (I do take into consideration those pairing suggestions/ship shout-outs, so go ahead and make a case if you feel particularly strongly about one as the story develops. Review or PM is fine.)**

**Thanks for the support, everyone. I really appreciate hearing from you.**

**Aside: I have reduced the rating to T for now, as there is really no need to bump it just yet. The rating will increase back to M with the first instance of graphic violence or sex. **


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